An engrossing and educational look at forensic nurse examiners.
A debut novel follows two Baltimore forensic nurse examiners who search for evidence in cases of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Trauma nurse Addie Donovan’s long hours evidently become too much for her fiance, who suddenly breaks off their engagement. She packs her things and moves in with her friend Rachel Tristin, a nurse and death investigator. Though she’s upset, Addie uses the opportunity to pursue her dream of becoming a forensic nurse examiner. It’s a demanding job that requires, for instance, a rigorous examination of a gay man whom two attackers brutally assaulted and sexually tortured. But Addie has a passion for helping people, and Rachel, seemingly inspired by her friend, becomes an FNE as well (“She wanted to help living victims of horrific crimes get through the worst day of their life”). Both women find time for potential romance with men they’ve met in the course of their work. Addie frequently confers with ruggedly handsome Detective Frank Knight on cases, and Rachel is immediately smitten with firefighter David, though he doesn’t call her after their first date. Meanwhile, there’s a possibility that a serial rapist is stalking and attacking women in Baltimore, ultimately resulting in one of the two friends being in peril. Keating and Shoenfeld’s novel often feels like a series of short stories. Chapters, for example, typically focus on a stand-alone subplot: Addie happens upon an icy-road accident involving a bus of handicapped children, and Rachel works her first case as an FNE. While the serial rapist story arc mostly sits on the back burner, the various subplots skillfully showcase two empathetic, professional women. Their thorough examinations entail gentle but direct questions as the nurses explain to the victims every aspect of the exam (for example, what they’re photographing and why). The authors’ extensive medical backgrounds produce meticulous descriptions and an unflinching but enlightening look at what constitutes sexual assault forensic exams. While Addie and Rachel have personal lives (primarily dating), time spent between the two friends is unfortunately negligible. But readers will likely hope for a sequel with the two laudable characters.
An engrossing and educational look at forensic nurse examiners.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79690-454-3
Page Count: 179
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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