A gritty and emotional tale of a complex young protagonist.
In Lawrence’s historical novel, a young man makes his way through late 18th-century London selling sex and engaging in other criminal activity to make ends meet.
18-year-old William Dempsey has struggled to get by in the rough neighborhoods of London his whole life. He picked up the nickname Blue Billy at a “bawdyhouse,” or brothel, run by Marathon Moll, and now, he returns there for a room and a job. He’d left for a life of luxury with the Marquess of Argyll, who wined and dined him in exchange for sex; after Billy took up with another man—also for money—he was cast out on the streets. Moll doesn’t let Billy return at first, but a violent run-in with a client brings a man named Tom Baker to Billy’s rescue, and Moll takes in the bruised and battered teen. At Moll’s place, Billy reunites with his friend Chandler, who works there. Eventually, Billy is back to his old ways, tempted by a con man and thief named Roger Calcroft, with whom he eventually cohabitates. But Tom remains a part of Billy’s life, bringing out the best in him. Lawrence portrays Billy as a street urchin with a heart of gold—or silver, at least—and weaves a poignant tale of a rough-around-the-edges young man who badly wants to do the right thing (“I’m sorry that the life you were born to has led you to grasp so desperately for happiness where no true happiness can ever be found,” Tom tells Billy at one point). Billy eventually finds that happiness with Tom, but Lawrence does his very best to generate new plot turns to keep them apart. Billy’s is not an easy world to live in, and the author brings it to vivid life with rough and sometimes-violent passages. However, it’s balanced with a burgeoning love story, making for a satisfying and moving novel.
A gritty and emotional tale of a complex young protagonist.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Broadbound Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2023
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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