An ambitious and heartfelt debut.
As Atlanta prepares for the 1996 Olympics, two young Black men deal with challenges at work and in their personal lives.
Jacob is a Brooklyn native, staying on in Atlanta after graduating from Morehouse to take a job with a real estate developer who has won the contract to “revitaliz[e]” (aka destroy and gentrify) the Black neighborhoods near the Olympic Village. He knows he’s gay, but has had very little experience and has not come out to his parents. He works closely with Daniel, an Atlanta native whose white mother has recently died without ever having explained to him how he is Black while his siblings and her husband are all white. Daniel, too, is dealing with confusion about his sexuality. As the book lays it out, in characteristically passionate prose, “Was a life—this life—between two Black men possible? Two Black men in love and protecting each other against whatever was out there in the world, moving together toward an unknown future?” The dual aspirations of this debut novel—to create a detailed, fact-based portrait of Atlanta on the cusp of change and to depict the pressures on gay Black men coming of age in the 1990s—are both realized, the former with detailed research about the specific neighborhoods involved, the latter with intense dramatic situations and inner monologues. Anger breaks through in fistfights, verbal showdowns, and a near-riot. Sometimes, the author seems not to trust us to keep the stakes and the big picture in mind. In the middle of a conversation with a new man in his life, Jacob begins ruminating on “the conversation that lurked just beneath their discussion” and “the unvoiced masculinity code,” themes already strongly articulated in the novel. During a tense meeting in the school principal’s office about a teacher who has made a remark about Daniel’s parentage, obviously different than his siblings’, it occurs to Daniel’s mother that “life roamed beyond them in that office—wild, reckless, unpredictably wonderful and unexpected. Life, large and sweeping, filled with gasps of intensity and excitement.” These are lovely observations but seem unlikely to have occurred to her in the moment. Another issue is that Jacob and Daniel’s boss, a white woman, is a two-dimensional villain, though her portrayal is explicitly linked to “the history of what little Black boys and little white girls have always been told about each other.”
An ambitious and heartfelt debut.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781668016282
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
