A novel that captures the emotional intensity, confusion, and quickness of adolescence.
It’s the summer of 1999: Kate Moss and Katie Holmes grace magazine covers as Ali, a Long Island teenager, encounters Justine, a checkout girl at the local Stop & Shop who’s almost as tall and thin as a cover girl herself.
Drawn to Justine's real-life glamour, Ali gets a job at the supermarket, and she and Justine become fast friends, or so she thinks. Justine goes from showing Ali the ropes at the store to roping her into risky adolescent behavior, from shoplifting and trespassing to restricting calories and purging. Ali is thrilled to oblige. When they’re not working, she and Justine share intimate moments of female friendship—putting on makeup, sunbathing, and getting drunk. Justine, her boyfriend, Chris, and his friend Ryan live in a posher neighborhood and attend a fancier high school than Ali, but she’s welcomed into their clique for as long as she’s willing to worship Justine’s ways. This is Harmon’s debut novel, and she also provides illustrations; she's done an impeccable job re-creating a very particular moment in time, exploring what it felt like to be a teenage girl when the beauty ideal for women grew to maddening heights. Though there was no social media, the expectations for how women should look were no less ubiquitous than they are now. Harmon’s words and illustrations together show how pervasive and seductive these images were, especially for still-developing minds. While the novel is short on resolution, it’s a propulsive depiction of what a summer in the New York suburbs felt like before iPhones and what a crush can drive someone to do. “Justine took my hand and threaded our fingers together,” Ali says. “I smiled sideways, feeling a weird, tense pleasure, my attention stretched taut between Ryan and Justine like a jump rope being pulled from either side.” Being a teenager is rife with tension, and Harmon confronts the subtle and not-so-subtle violence of coming-of-age.
A novel that captures the emotional intensity, confusion, and quickness of adolescence.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951142-33-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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