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
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A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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