An elegant novel about the ways pain can shape a man’s personality.
In Walsh’s debut novel, a Connecticut man survives the hell of war only to lead a lonely peacetime existence back home.
Joe DaSilva grows up in a small town on the banks of the Connecticut River, the son of a Portuguese waterman. He spends his childhood learning to tie knots from his father, getting into trouble with his best friend Bill Crawley, and pining after his childhood crush, Peggy. The week before high school graduation, Joe proposes to Peggy only to be rejected. The brokenhearted Joe quickly enlists in the Navy—there’s a war coming, after all—despite the reservations of his parents. With Bill in tow, Joe sails for Manila just in time to get attacked by the Japanese military (a wounded Bill is shipped to Australia before the coming Japanese invasion, but Joe stays behind and is captured when the Philippines fall). He somehow survives the Bataan Death March, a prison camp, malaria, and dysentery, but when he makes it back to Connecticut at war’s end, he’s a shell of his former self. Even worse, he learns that Peggy and Bill have become engaged in his absence. Resentful of his closest friends and wracked by post-traumatic stress, Joe settles into a stoic life as a mechanic. For the next 40 years, he’s content to repress his memories of the war—and all of his other grievances—until a new waitress takes a job at one of the local restaurants. Leigh Ann and her young daughter, Shelly, are new in town. Shelly spends her days alone at a vacant hotel while Leigh Ann works her shift, and Joe takes it upon himself to keep an eye on the child. As Joe inserts himself into their lives, he can’t help but allow them into his own. In the process, he’s finally forced to deal with the many ghosts of his past.
The author is a skilled storyteller with a knack for bringing scenes to vivid life, whether they depict a bucolic afternoon spent fishing on the river or a terrifying moment from the war: “He was barely able to rise to one knee the night the Japanese burst into camp. The first rifle butt to the back of his head folded the hemispheres of his brain in on each other. He lay there on his side, time out of body, eyes recording the scene like a camera knocked to the ground, still rolling.” The novel takes its time getting started, and the early chapters are burdened with an unfortunate sentimentality. From the point the war commences, however, Walsh weaves an immersive narrative that does not let up for the rest of the book. Even when the story treads into familiar territory—older Joe is reminiscent of any number of late-career Clint Eastwood film performances as a grump waiting to have his heart softened—the author is deft enough at characterization and plotting to keep the material from feeling stale. Those looking for a bighearted tale of PTSD and catharsis will find much to love in Joe’s story.
An elegant novel about the ways pain can shape a man’s personality.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781977261120
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2023
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
A sweet bedtime story.
A boy and his stuffed bear head into the woods.
Having captured readers’ attention with Born a Crime (2016), his bestselling memoir of growing up in South Africa, comedian and television host Noah has written a parable about decision-making. As he puts it in a brief prologue, “It’s about disagreements and difference—but it’s also about how we bridge those gaps and find what matters most, whether we’re parents or kids, neighbors, gnomes, or political adversaries. It’s a picture book, but it’s not a children’s book. Rather, it is a book for kids to share with parents and for parents to share with kids.” With plentiful illustrations by Hahn and in language aimed at young listeners, it tells the story of a small boy so impatient to start his Saturday adventures that he rebels against the rules of his household and heads out without brushing his teeth or making his bed, despite the reminders of his stuffed bear, Walter. “We can’t just run away,” protests the bear. “Your mother will miss you. And where will we sleep? And who will make us waffles?” “We’ll build our own house,” the boy responds. “And we’ll grow our own waffles!” From there, the pair go on their walkabout, encountering a garden gnome, a pair of snails, and a gang of animated coins who have lessons to offer about making choices. Though the author suggests in the introduction that adult readers might enjoy the book on their own, those looking for a follow-up to the memoir or a foray into adult fiction should be warned that this is not that book.
A sweet bedtime story.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780593729960
Page Count: 128
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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