by Gillian Linden ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2024
A subtle and promising debut about the hazy liminality of late pandemic life.
A woman teaching at a Manhattan private school witnesses a suspicious encounter between a faculty member and a student.
Taking place over the course of one week, this debut focuses on the accrual of small cracks in the life of the narrator, a wife and mother of two small children, set against the massive fissure of life during Covid-19. One Monday, after arriving at her part-time job teaching English, she witnesses a senior colleague, Jeremy, alone in a classroom with a ninth grade student, Olivia. Jeremy is the advisor to the school literary magazine, Negative Space, and Olivia is on staff, so this encounter seems normal—except that the classroom door is closed, and the narrator witnesses Jeremy lean in to touch his head to Olivia’s, a gesture she feels compelled to relay to the school administration. As the week unfolds, Linden treats this narrative thread with a weight equal to other events tugging at the woman: an ongoing dental emergency for her anxious daughter; a fainting episode; a husband who spends his time on Zoom calls or spritzing his pandemic-purchase plants; a looming scandal in Olivia’s wealthy family; and, of course, the gradually escalating fallout of the narrator’s decision to report the ambiguous gesture she saw. The decision to balance all these facets equally diffuses some of the potential drama of the novel, and the narrator’s “numbness” and uncertainty, though consistent with her world-weariness, contribute to a restrained style that some might find detached, even dissociated. Ultimately, though, Linden is a miniaturist, and the precision with which she works, whether describing a child’s existential bedtime angst or Zoom audio glitches, can be as satisfying as any more explosive plot.
A subtle and promising debut about the hazy liminality of late pandemic life.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781324065548
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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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
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by Alison Espach ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 30, 2024
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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