A knotty, philosophical mystery dense with lingering regrets.
In Harnett’s debut novel, a middle-aged man reflects on his adolescence while searching for his missing first love and the contentedness that has eluded him.
In the year 2033, the 52-year-old narrator’s old flame, June, contacts him and asks him to look after her cat. She then disappears—precisely as climate protests in the United States give way to a dissolution of government. As the nation is reborn in small pockets of local administration, the narrator returns to his hometown, Harmony Valley, in search not only of June, but of the simplicity of childhood. The unnamed narrator was 12 years old and June 15 when they first met at school. She pulled him into a half-real fantasy, shadowing the school janitor and uncovering the meeting room of a secret society—the L.E.F (“The Order of Friends of Liberty”). While the narrator lost interest and drifted into an unsatisfying life, June took the L.E.F. seriously. Around that time, Vietnamese lawyer Tiffany Ho joined the law firm of Jeremiah & Jeremiah, a generational enterprise that has long acted for one important client. How are June, Tiffany, and the L.E.F. connected? Sifting through his memories, can the narrator finally make sense of the past and seize hold of the happiness he let slip through his fingers? Harnett writes in the first person, crafting a wistful work that reflects both the uncertain child and the nostalgic adult. The prose grows wild and heavy with description, the narrator feeling his way and making no attempt to cut extraneous recollections or orientate the reader regarding the political upheaval. The tale is thus heavily immersive—and all the better for it (though readers who prefer clarity will appreciate the appended timeline of events). As is so often the way with memoir, the young narrator emerges more clearly than his older self. June is a force of nature, as enigmatic in later life as she was in school. Other characters come and go via well-drawn vignettes. The story must slowly be pieced together, like a jigsaw puzzle, and the sorting is perhaps more satisfying than the final picture. Nonetheless, there is plenty here to reward the reader’s commitment. Numerous full-page black-and-white illustrations accompany the text and recall the excitability of middle-grade stories.
A knotty, philosophical mystery dense with lingering regrets.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-9867445-4-4
Page Count: 411
Publisher: Serpent Key Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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