Messud’s eye for class distinctions and gender expectation is as sharp as ever in this enjoyable minor effort.
Alice Armstrong, an American wife and mother transplanted to Australia in 1971, is unnerved by the responsibilities of running her grand new home.
Her husband, Teddy, pleased by the promotion he gets with his bank’s overseas posting, jokingly dubs the mansion they’ve rented in Sydney “Chateau Deeds,” name-checking the pretentious nouveau-riche Australians who built it. Her daughters, 4 and 6, run shrieking gleefully through the vast rooms. But Alice feels she’s living in “a dream life, where nothing could matter and nothing would last, a hiatus from reality.” Reality intrudes when she realizes she can’t do all the household work on her own. A comedy of employment errors ensues, limned with Messud’s characteristic tart, cogently detailed realism. It begins with an unwed mother who brings her infant, cleans haphazardly for half a day, and never comes back. Other maladroit hires include a bossy Russian caterer for the couple’s numerous parties; a salty live-in housekeeper who turns out to be wanted for credit card fraud and passing bad checks; and the driver of the children's school carpool, whose inappropriate attentions to the girls stop barely short of molestation. Alice also has a hard time with the opinionated gardener left behind by the owners; like all the Australian help, he barely conceals his opinion that his putative boss is hopelessly clueless. Teddy, rarely home, can’t understand why she can’t manage better, and Alice can’t understand what she’s doing in this strange place: “It was as if she had awakened after a drugged sleep to unfamiliar surroundings, as if some irretrievable portion of her life had been stolen from her.” This might be sad if readers were encouraged to feel any empathy for Alice, but Messud takes a cool, detached tone, emphasizing the humor of her dilemmas. The ending suggests that Alice is finally taking some control of her life, reinforcing the overall impression that the stakes aren’t very high here.
Messud’s eye for class distinctions and gender expectation is as sharp as ever in this enjoyable minor effort.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64969-729-5
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Tablo Tales
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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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