A well-crafted, suspenseful novel that highlights difficult historical themes.
Vicars presents a family saga that focuses on cycles of violence from the Civil War era to the present day.
Philip Richards is at the Hilltop bar in Culmine, Texas, contemplating getting the dinner special, when he’s confronted by a woman named Carmen, whom he struggles to recall. She brings up a recent encounter between them and asks him about a mysterious “Valentine’s night promise.” It turns out that he frequently has blackouts while drunk and has stretches of lost time in his past. After his ill father dies, 35-year-old Philip finally faces the family that he’s avoided since he left home at age 15; it’s revealed that his grandfather had sexually abused his sister, Dinah, and that the family refused to acknowledge it. In his father’s home, he finds a manuscript—which may or may not be fiction—written by his father’s great uncle, Sabine Richards; the story involves Philip’s great-great grandfather Russell and an enslaved woman named Feevah. Philip and his new lover, Edith, plan to read the text and contemplate the long history of racism, sexual assault, and violence in his family; she believes that Sabine, too, “longs to understand his own family history.” Soon afterward, Philip gets into a fight with a stranger whom he thinks is sexually assaulting Carmen; after the police arrive, however, the stranger and Carmen falsely accuse Philip of rape and assault. In this emotionally resonant novel, Vicars expertly weaves together past and present events to construct a portrait of a troubled family. The narrative combines elements of mysteries and historical fiction, while also developing realistic relationships that feel authentic. The transitions between the past and present accounts are sometimes abrupt, but it offers readers welcome respites while never abandoning the essential plot. Readers may question the role of characters who are portrayed as seducers and manipulators; however, the novel as a whole expertly portrays the effects of assault and violence.
A well-crafted, suspenseful novel that highlights difficult historical themes.Pub Date: July 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781917214094
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Bloodhound Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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