A knotty, sui generis evocation of mothers’ feelings of fear and loss.
Two women reckon with loss and displacement in a coastal town.
This astringent, fuguelike novel by Kurdish-born Swedish author Karam opens with an unnamed woman who’s long been on a desperate search for her missing daughter. She walks the streets of a beach town, haunting a corniche where “The Missing One” worked at a restaurant. When the mother’s efforts prove too futile to bear, she leaps from the edge of the corniche. That incident has a witness, a pregnant tourist whose child will later die in utero. Karam interweaves the stories of the two women, connecting them almost to the point of blurring their lives together. The pregnant woman is a refugee from state violence, and the woman searching for her daughter leaves behind three children living in a nearby lot, surviving mainly on the goodwill of a greengrocer. (Karam draws a stark distinction between the well-off habitués of the shops along the corniche and the refugees who live near it.) The plot details here aren’t as crucial, though, as the mood of oppression, particularly toward women, and Karam’s various means of conjuring it. She bounces around timelines, plays with point of view (the pregnant woman is “you”), and interweaves the two women’s voices within extended passages. The “singularity” of the title refers to the force in astrophysics that “pushes bodies together and renders the distance between them nil,” a meaningful metaphor for two women similarly bereft. Translator Vogel deftly manages Karam’s rhetorical shifts while preserving the mood of disorientation. The book doesn’t resolve its central crisis so much as suggest that such crises are all-pervasive, and that migrants will continue to absorb abuses that are bigoted at best and fatal at worst.
A knotty, sui generis evocation of mothers’ feelings of fear and loss.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781558611931
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
A moving, realistic look at one woman’s post-divorce family life that manages to be both poignant and funny.
A recently divorced writer juggles a chaotic full house, a struggling career, and a confusing romantic life.
Lila Kennedy thought she had the perfect family—a loving mother, a doting stepfather, two wonderful daughters, and a great husband. She even wrote a self-help book about repairing a marriage, which was published a mere two weeks before her husband left her. After her own mother’s sudden death, Lila finds herself an unexpected single mom with her health-nut stepfather, Bill, for a roommate. When her long-absent actor father, Gene, moves in, things go from crowded to chaotic. When Gene isn’t talking about his memories of starring on a Star Trek–like television show, he’s starting fights with Bill. Perhaps the worst part is that Lila’s supposed to produce a new book about the unexpected direction her life has taken. She quickly finds that writing about her real-life romantic exploits (including the kind gardener Bill hired and the sexy single dad she lusts after at school pick-up) and the actual heartbreak that upended her family is easier said than done. Moyes creates a world that is believable and funny. It’s hilarious to read about the distinct characters in Lila’s life—such as her lentil-loving stepfather and egocentric biological father—interacting with each other. There’s plenty of drama here, but none of it feels forced. It all comes from flawed people doing their best to coexist and making plenty of mistakes along the way. Moyes combines the warmth of an Annabel Monaghan rom-com with the humanity of a Catherine Newman novel, creating a story that will provoke tears and laughter.
A moving, realistic look at one woman’s post-divorce family life that manages to be both poignant and funny.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781984879325
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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