An essential entry in this exceptional writer’s corpus.
This reissue of the Australian writer’s first novel suggests the seeds of his peculiar style as he describes a boy’s early life.
Nine-year-old Clement Killeaton looks at the new 1948 calendar in his kitchen, with its picture of Jesus and his parents during their flight from Bethlehem to Egypt. Clement and his parents live in Bassett, near Melbourne, the two Australian cities that pretty much mark the extent of their travels. In this debut, first published in 1974, Murnane establishes motifs that will recur in subsequent work, including Catholicism; horse racing; the effects of different landscapes; the play of light, especially through colored glass; and the play of perception and ideas through the mind. What little plot the book has concerns the efforts of Clement’s father to repeat the big win he had with a horse he trained. Gambling, borrowing money, and tensions over debt pervade the Killeaton household. Elsewhere, the narrative follows Clement, a clever loner who creates miniature racetracks and farms in his backyard, prepares elaborate horse races using marbles, copes with bullies, and tries to learn about sex from schoolgirls who generally delight in deflecting his efforts. Murnane is skilled at closely observed scenes and quite funny at times, but he will likely frustrate readers looking for conventional fiction. The chief pleasures here are his departures from convention, eccentricities of tone and diction, and flights of fancy, all trademarks of his later fiction. In one example, Clement is studying the light coming through his front door’s green-gold glass panel when the narration takes off for two pages of long, complex sentences about colorful creatures and oddly shaped cities and great journeys. It’s a glimpse of the writer finding his own path and an esthetic springboard in the parsing of the ripples and riffs of a boy’s imagination when not waylaid by sex and saints and bullies.
An essential entry in this exceptional writer’s corpus.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-91150-836-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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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