Another delightfully cerebral and bighearted novel from a distinctive voice in contemporary fiction.
The heroine of The Idiot (2017), Batuman's Pulitzer Prize finalist, continues to interrogate the intersection of art and identity during her sophomore year at Harvard.
It’s 1996, and Selin is embarking on her fall semester with a broken heart and a lingering obsession with Ivan, the mathematician she’d fallen in love with as a first-year student. When she’s not checking her email, hoping for a message from him, she’s reading Kierkegaard and André Breton, looking for clues about the kind of person she wants to be. Walking to the library on a Saturday night, she encounters small groups of students, “the girls laughing hysterically and collapsing against the guys’ chests. I knew that was what a person was supposed to be doing, but I didn’t know why, or how.” All Selin knows for sure is that she will be a novelist, but she’s still trying to figure out how to do that, too, and she sees the problem of how to live and the question of how to write as two sides of the same dilemma. She spends a lot of time thinking about sex—something she wants to have done but doesn’t actually want to do—and it says a lot about her that she regards her fear of sex as “immature and anti-novelistic.” But making the deliberate choice to shed her virginity isn’t quite the turning point she imagined. It’s when she travels to Russia for an internship that she feels a new sense of self-possession and possibility. This is not a plot-driven novel, so readers who like a lot of action may not enjoy Selin’s philosophizing or penchant for deep analysis. But Selin is a disarming narrator, tossing off insights that are revelatory, moving, and laugh-out-loud funny—sometimes all at once—and it’s exciting to watch her become the author of her own story.
Another delightfully cerebral and bighearted novel from a distinctive voice in contemporary fiction.Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-525-55759-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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
A sweet bedtime story.
A boy and his stuffed bear head into the woods.
Having captured readers’ attention with Born a Crime (2016), his bestselling memoir of growing up in South Africa, comedian and television host Noah has written a parable about decision-making. As he puts it in a brief prologue, “It’s about disagreements and difference—but it’s also about how we bridge those gaps and find what matters most, whether we’re parents or kids, neighbors, gnomes, or political adversaries. It’s a picture book, but it’s not a children’s book. Rather, it is a book for kids to share with parents and for parents to share with kids.” With plentiful illustrations by Hahn and in language aimed at young listeners, it tells the story of a small boy so impatient to start his Saturday adventures that he rebels against the rules of his household and heads out without brushing his teeth or making his bed, despite the reminders of his stuffed bear, Walter. “We can’t just run away,” protests the bear. “Your mother will miss you. And where will we sleep? And who will make us waffles?” “We’ll build our own house,” the boy responds. “And we’ll grow our own waffles!” From there, the pair go on their walkabout, encountering a garden gnome, a pair of snails, and a gang of animated coins who have lessons to offer about making choices. Though the author suggests in the introduction that adult readers might enjoy the book on their own, those looking for a follow-up to the memoir or a foray into adult fiction should be warned that this is not that book.
A sweet bedtime story.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780593729960
Page Count: 128
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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