Despite Ball’s mordant humor, the pain here feels all too real.
Ball’s mixture of satire and domestic drama turns contemporary suburban life into a frightening dystopia of “material leisure and emotional poverty.”
The satiric element centers around the Petra School, a private “temple of education” in upscale Somerset, Connecticut. Headmistress Agnes seems warm and charismatic if a bit eccentric at first, but her dictatorial creepiness becomes apparent, both in the increasingly strident school bulletins she sends—linking dairy and dyslexia, warning against (pre-Covid era) vaccinations, banning any mention of Jewish holidays—and as she exerts personal control over both students and parents. Starting on New Year’s Eve 2013, Ball follows several of those parents and potential parents as three marriages begin to tailspin into crisis. Current Petra parents Virginia and Tripp are keeping huge secrets from each other: Novelist Virginia has cancer, while financially strapped Tripp has built a survivalist arsenal in the basement. Virginia’s old friend Rachel and her Swedish architect husband, Gunter, have recently arrived from Manhattan and enrolled their kids at Petra. Initially Rachel, though Jewish, is so desperate to fit in that she ignores hints of Agnes’ antisemitism, but Gunter is dismissive of Petra (and suburbia and America in general). Then Agnes begins to woo him. Margo, a compulsive cleaner and stay-at-home mother of three sons, has never recovered emotionally from the death of an infant daughter. Now a fanatic follower of Agnes’ Wednesday evening meditation sessions, Margo wants to switch her boys from public school to Petra despite objections from the kids and her overworked husband, Richard, a devoted father, pothead, and online porn addict. Once readers are drawn into these stories, Ball leaps into a broad rhetorical section, describing from a third-person plural viewpoint all the ways suburban men and women, as well as their children, are miserable. Certainly the kids Ball introduces are unhappy. Virginia and Tripp’s daughter is burdened by her parents’ secrets. Petra turns Rachel’s 6-year-old son into an outcast. Richard and Margo’s three sons stand by helplessly watching their parents’ mental health deteriorate.
Despite Ball’s mordant humor, the pain here feels all too real.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8021-5888-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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