An interesting tale of love lost and found in two very different Vietnams.
This latest from Pearl, a sequel to Hearts on Fire, Paris 1968 (2018),opens on a happy occasion in Paris. American Robert Samberg has recently closed a deal to make himself the owner of the largest string of radio stations in America, making him a genuine media tycoon. The novel’s opening sections effectively remind readers of the strangely innocent, transitional time it was in geopolitics. The Vietnam War is long over, but trouble is brewing in a world that’s about to enter a new age of terrorism (Samberg takes a phone call from an American foreign secretary official who talks about having trouble with Saddam Hussein and Kuwait, for instance). Samberg is summoned to Washington by Secretary of State James Baker and asked to undertake a mission to help the U.S. government restore relations with the Vietnamese government. Samberg has a long history with the country. Back in 1968, he had a brief, heartbreaking relationship with a woman named My Hahn, who’s since become a rising power in a Vietnamese government that would very much like to normalize political and economic relations with the U.S. Baker and the American foreign policy makers think sending one civilian on an informal mission to test the waters in Vietnam is the way to proceed, and Samberg takes the job despite his reservations. In Vietnam, he encounters My Hahn again and encounters two surprises: They have a son he knew nothing about, and his complex love for Vietnam is still very much alive. The narrative is a miracle of compression; in far fewer than 200 pages, Pearl manages to create two compelling characters in Samberg and My Hahn, atmospherically convey the social and political feel of Vietnam in 1990, and steadily ratchet up the tempo of the plot. The novel succeeds as both a time capsule and an absorbing love story.
An interesting tale of love lost and found in two very different Vietnams.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-99-729272-5
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Fifty Years Late Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2021
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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