Feeney has insights into boyhood and, more importantly, has written a great boy to help her tell them.
Two teachers and a teenage boy in western Ireland go through painful changes and, yes, learn to build a boat.
Math-obsessed teenager Jamie O’Neill is raised by a single father after his mother died during childbirth. Literal-minded and sensitive, he keeps himself secure by making lists and working on his notes for a perpetual motion machine. So when he starts at a new school, run by the conservative Father Faulks and full of bullies, he's soon spending most of his time in the classroom of Tess Mahon, a kind English teacher with her own fractured family: a dead mother, an alcoholic father, and a cold husband. They’re both drawn into the orbit of woodworking teacher Tadhg Foley, who proposes that an Irish boat, a currach, could satisfy Jamie’s desire for perpetual motion and keep him out of the sway of some of the more toxic boys. Feeney tracks both Jamie and Tess, and the sections following Jamie are the stronger. She uses a stream-of-consciousness first-person narration and poetic syntax to capture the boy (“I would like that solitude for this boat, / so / I resisted their invitation / but Mr Foley passed no notice”). Tess’ sections, written in a more traditional style, seem flat by comparison. The novel is an intensive probe of contemporary Irish society; the island’s culture of shame and silence is picked apart (one minor character exits with a defeated repetition of “We don’t talk about it”), as is the continuing influence of the Catholic Church. But the characters find meaning in the currach and as well in the concept of meitheal, or communal effort. Jamie’s conflict is to reconcile the haphazard construction of the boat and the perfect machine he has imagined. He must leave his comfort zone, just as Tess must leave the safe prison of her marriage.
Feeney has insights into boyhood and, more importantly, has written a great boy to help her tell them.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781771965859
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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
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