A light but enjoyable, optimistic tale.
A grumpy, emotionally isolated octogenarian living in Scotland travels to Antarctica and rediscovers herself.
The years and decades have quietly slipped by Veronica McCreedy as she has lived alone along the Ayrshire coast with her various staff tending to her, her home, and its grounds. But midway through her 80s, she rediscovers her teenage diaries and realizes that she doesn’t recognize the isolated person she has become. Though her short-term memory might not be what it once was, the memories of her teenage years come flooding back, and she decides she must find out if she has any living relatives and reclaim the adventurousness that once defined her. When the initial meeting with her 27-year-old grandson, Patrick, is a flop, she decides she’ll leave her millions to the Antarctic penguins she’s been watching on a television series. And, in a choice that readers might view incredulously, she buys all the necessary equipment, clothing, and tickets, announces her planned arrival time at the Locket Island research facility, and sets off. Prior, author of Ellie and the Harpmaker (2019), has written a story about the importance of family and love and how memories might remain long buried but, once they surface, can be just as distressing or joy-inducing as when they first occurred. The narrative, partially told by Veronica, partially by Patrick, and partially via emails, blog posts, and diary entries, explores the complicated emotions that guide people’s decisions, in both good and bad ways. Drug use, addiction, and depression are touched on, but Prior ensures that readers understand the underlying goodness of her characters and their ability to survive despite loss. While some might view the story’s proselytizing about climate change and the redemptive love of animals onerous, others will agree wholeheartedly.
A light but enjoyable, optimistic tale.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0381-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
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
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
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