A comic interrogation of manhood set in a nearly man-free apocalypse.
A nerd discovers he may be the only man to have survived a deadly plague in Dargitz’s debut satirical novel.
Twenty-two-year-old Fletcher Sinclair was never a prime specimen of masculinity—he was an introverted community college student with thick glasses, greasy hair, and a love of video games and energy drinks. Then a super-virus literally wiped out every other man on earth, leaving Fletcher the lone surviving example of manhood. After spending months in isolation following the deaths of his parents and brother, Fletcher is rescued from his house by a small group of female doctors who have been laboring to understand why the “Delilah” virus only targets men—a study that requires, of course, a living male subject. Fletcher provides them with bodily fluid samples, and he agrees to stay hidden at their compound so as to not become a target of the raiders, cultists, and other bad actors roaming the post-pandemic female wasteland. At first, it’s great to have some company, but after weeks of doing little more than rewatching Sleepless in Seattle in his hospital room, Fletcher begins to feel a bit coddled. He begins to wonder: Shouldn’t the last man on earth act a little more…manly? When violence strikes the hospital, Fletcher is forced to learn the hard way that being the last surviving man requires an unpleasant amount of surviving. The author’s comedic prose flows easily, managing to sneak in quite a bit of his character’s traumatized psychology: “[Fletcher] had developed a nice little defense mechanism during his isolation that acted as a firewall to most forms of sentimentality. When an apocalypse is at your door, wallowing is an indulgence you simply can’t afford. Because wallowing is just one little hop away from giving up…” The book is far too long, but the length does give Dargitz ample space to move beyond the sitcom-like premise and explore some deeper issues related to the concept of masculinity, in a narrative more timely than it may seem.
A comic interrogation of manhood set in a nearly man-free apocalypse.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Edderkoppen Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
