An entertaining novel that uses the beauty industry to examine issues of poverty, class, and sexism.
A young Trinidadian writer strikes back at the patriarchy with the help of a famous beauty entrepreneur.
Though it’s set in the world of the Caribbean beauty industry and its fascination with makeup might seem frivolous at first glance, Mc Ivor’s entertaining first novel is anything but skin deep. Under the glossy surface of this story about two skittish, driven people finding each other in complicated circumstances, this novel has bigger ambitions. Mc Ivor uses the beauty industry to explore the rifts created by poverty, sexism, and class in modern-day Trinidad, revealing how ingrained misogyny can be in a patriarchal society and how hard it can be to overcome. At the heart of the story is Bianca Bridge, a promising young writer who’s the daughter of a wealthy businessman. When her affair with a powerful married man becomes public, her reputation and hopes for success are crushed. She refuses to ask her father for help and works as a model to make ends meet though she hates the work. (She is, of course, conveniently beautiful.) Then makeup guru Obadiah Cortland hires her to work at his magazine. Obadiah is cold and supercilious, but his carefully cultivated public persona is a mask. Growing up in poverty, Obadiah has fought for everything he has, and to him, his success seems precarious. Still, he and Bianca and the magazine staff decide to make a powerful statement on crime and corruption in spite of the risk. The novel sputters on occasion—Bianca’s attempts to write fiction about her late mother are an unnecessary distraction, for example—but the irony of her needing her father’s support to carve a path for herself is not lost on the author. Mc Ivor’s ultimate message is clear: We all hide behind something, whether it’s makeup or privilege, and only by being true to ourselves can we triumph.
An entertaining novel that uses the beauty industry to examine issues of poverty, class, and sexism.Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9780063278813
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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