An elevated soap opera but a well-written and affecting one.
The interwoven lives of artists, failed and successful.
Rye Adler evokes the late celebrity photographer Peter Beard in many ways: He seems to move easily in the world, gifted and carefree, and everyone recognizes him as a genius behind the lens. Yet something is not right in the now middle-aged man’s life, for when Brundage’s latest novel opens, a headline blares, “Rye Adler, Photographer of the Rich and Infamous, Is Presumed Dead at 52.” The focus shifts to Julian Ladd, classmate and roommate and rival, who early on realized that compared to Rye in most aspects, he was second-tier at most: “Editors would stare at his pictures, glumly, and say nothing.” So it was that Julian went into advertising, taking with him the one treasure that Rye could not have—Magda, a strikingly beautiful fellow photography student—and building a life of wealth and conspicuous consumption, all Armani suits and “shiny, expensive loafers.” Does it buy him happiness? Of course not. Rye is in turn married to a brittle, brilliant translator whose “favorite language is silence,” and each day is a negotiation in frustration. Things soon change from miserable to catastrophic when, the story shifting into the near past, Rye and Magda meet by chance—or is it?—and revelations begin to spill out. Brundage’s characters are convincing, if mostly of the sort you’d meet in the Hamptons or at tony Chelsea galleries; at its best and most emotionally fraught moments, her novel could be bookended by Christopher Bollen’s Orient and André Aciman’s Eight White Nights. The resolution, however, seems a bit pat, as does the complication that sends Rye’s life into free fall. One thing’s for sure, though: Readers will root for him over the willfully unfulfilled Julian, whose life consists of omitting “essential clues” and leaving it to others to “draw their own conclusions, which were almost always more complex and intriguing than any he’d intended.”
An elevated soap opera but a well-written and affecting one.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-43037-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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