Tackles a serious theme of forlornness with sincerity, buoyancy, and wit.
O’Connor’s debut is a coming-of-age tale of an Irish teen in 1996 who, on learning he’s adopted, plans to track down his birth parents.
Cork, Ireland, native Benjamin Hackett celebrates his 18th birthday with “a stack of pints at the local pub.” Awakening the next morning a year older and hung over, Ben returns home to a shock: his parents have decided to tell him he was adopted. He’s understandably upset and wants to find the parents he believes abandoned him and “punch them in their noses.” Enlisting his pal JJ for companionship and JJ’s Fiat 127, Ben heads to the Barnamire Convent in Cork, where he was born. Unfortunately, mere yards away from the convent, the two friends are mugged by a peculiar (but armed) fellow who insists they call him Apache. The nuns, meanwhile, are less than helpful in providing details on Ben’s adoption, and police show up to arrest Ben and JJ for trespassing. Getting the info on his birth parents expeditiously may require Ben to hobnob with criminal sorts and do a few things he’ll surely regret later. All for a potential reunion that shows no indication of being a happy one. O’Connor forgoes sentiment early on: Ben describes the unknown couple who birthed him as “rancid parents.” But what could have been a dark, dreary tale is sweetened by a surprising amount of humor. JJ, for one, offsets Ben’s ever-present ire with drollery; seeing a “Trespassers will die” sign, he notes, “That seems fairly unambiguous.” There are, however, more sober moments; Ben does favors in exchange for help—often something illicit that could put his life or others’ in peril. O’Connor’s lilting prose beautifies his tale, like a house that “looked nothing more than a teensy white dot high against the rocks with seagulls squabbling over which one of them was due a perch on her chimneypot.”
Tackles a serious theme of forlornness with sincerity, buoyancy, and wit.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943402-46-5
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Down & Out Books
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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