A tart, irreverent rant of a novel that takes a sharp turn toward something more serious.
Sex and the City meets Ottessa Moshfegh meets the quasi-campus satire in this wickedly funny novel.
It’s said that misery loves company; by Butler’s reckoning, millennials love misery and other miserable millennials. Thirty-something Margaret Anne “Moddie” Yance returns to the Midwestern college town where she grew up; after splitting from her long-term boyfriend, she’s in despair—at one moment wondering why she spent so much time with Nick, a “megalomaniac or perhaps a covert narcissist,” and at others lamenting the loss of someone who knew her intimately and appreciated her biting humor…to a point. Most of Moddie’s friends are hardly friends [insert sarcastic tone], and she has no idea how to play nicely with them. Indeed, she’s a scathing critic, a kind of politically correct liberal who listens to NPR and relishes regurgitating facts from it. She tells a woman who loves Facebook that it’s “the number one worldwide distributor of child pornography, but whatever helps you stay connected, I guess.” At the same time, most of Moddie’s “friends” are seriously and hilariously insipid; for example, they plan to address a high-profile campus sexual assault in a “global inter-student way” with “molestation and rape questionnaire[s]” at the beginning of the semester. Shifting from one point of view to another, sometimes within a single chapter, Butler skewers all her characters as they whine about being overworked by their academic jobs and unappreciated by their friends and significant others. Sound like fun? Butler writes with a bee-sting-sharp sense of humor and irony, and nothing is sacred, not Hillary Clinton, not Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before Congress. What’s most surprising is that this cooler-than-the-cool-kids novel actually has an emotional center that will make your pulse race.
A tart, irreverent rant of a novel that takes a sharp turn toward something more serious.Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780593730355
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
A sweet bedtime story.
A boy and his stuffed bear head into the woods.
Having captured readers’ attention with Born a Crime (2016), his bestselling memoir of growing up in South Africa, comedian and television host Noah has written a parable about decision-making. As he puts it in a brief prologue, “It’s about disagreements and difference—but it’s also about how we bridge those gaps and find what matters most, whether we’re parents or kids, neighbors, gnomes, or political adversaries. It’s a picture book, but it’s not a children’s book. Rather, it is a book for kids to share with parents and for parents to share with kids.” With plentiful illustrations by Hahn and in language aimed at young listeners, it tells the story of a small boy so impatient to start his Saturday adventures that he rebels against the rules of his household and heads out without brushing his teeth or making his bed, despite the reminders of his stuffed bear, Walter. “We can’t just run away,” protests the bear. “Your mother will miss you. And where will we sleep? And who will make us waffles?” “We’ll build our own house,” the boy responds. “And we’ll grow our own waffles!” From there, the pair go on their walkabout, encountering a garden gnome, a pair of snails, and a gang of animated coins who have lessons to offer about making choices. Though the author suggests in the introduction that adult readers might enjoy the book on their own, those looking for a follow-up to the memoir or a foray into adult fiction should be warned that this is not that book.
A sweet bedtime story.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9780593729960
Page Count: 128
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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