A noble and ambitious attempt to fuse genre pastiche with queer narratives but one that sometimes fails to connect its...
A young man in 18th-century Britain successively falls for, and must choose between, three different men in this debut historical novel.
Charming, fashionable, erudite, and gay Englishman Hugh Entwistle is portrayed as an ideal man of the 18th century in this novel, which is, in part, an homage to coming-of-age novels of the era in which it’s set, such as Henry Fielding’s 1749 classic Tom Jones. It’s also a work of queer historical archiving that’s as admirable and remarkable as its hero. The preface sets up the conceit that the novel is a period document, a fiction penned by the author’s ancestor about a gay hero; the setup is a great authorly salute to similar openings from past classics, in which the author claims to have stumbled upon a “rusted trunk” with “no lock,” and, lo and behold, the manuscript is found. Novelist Lawrence continues this ruse with fidelity, writing in a facsimile Georgian style, which is the novel’s great achievement and, at times, its great pitfall. Juicy, “Dear Reader” asides establish an air of close confidence as the novel explores the secret gay romances of Hugh and his suitors—the alliterative trio of Bramble, Benjamin, and Brent. Yet there’s a degree to which the style, and the plot itself, get a bit confusing. Scaffolding the novel, as if to mirror the life of the protagonist, is a political history of the radical parliamentarian John Wilkes, which doesn’t seamlessly combine with the story of Hugh’s courting and being courted; likewise, period details of aesthetic philosophy, and particularly philosopher Edmund Burke’s writing on the “sublime,” feel overwrought and even somewhat haughty. More frustrating is the fact that sublime is too narrowly defined as “pleasure at the relief from Pain,” which doesn’t quite capture the scope of Burke’s imagination. Nonetheless, the developing, homoerotic love stories, a snappy courtroom scene, and a delightful final image tilt the scales of the novel closer to pleasure than pain.
A noble and ambitious attempt to fuse genre pastiche with queer narratives but one that sometimes fails to connect its disparate details.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 404
Publisher: Broadbound Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2021
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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