A small book about small things that becomes a big book about everything.
A recent college graduate with amorphous literary ambitions is taken up by a wealthy artist couple in the first months of the Trump years. As he becomes increasingly entwined in their lives, he finds himself questioning his own allegiances.
With her second novel—following Neon in Daylight (2018)—Hoby returns to a favorite subject: unmoored young New Yorkers enmeshed in other people’s lives. This time, it’s Luca, a 22-year-old intern at a prestigious literary magazine called The New Old World, whose main ambition is to transcend his past as a chubby kid with a single mom from Broomfield, Colorado. “I wanted badly to be good; I wanted desperately to be liked,” he explains, narrating from his perch more than a decade in the future. “It was easy to confuse the two.” This will be the conflict of the novel, although it will take the better part of the next 300 pages for Luca to figure out that he is torn between two opposing poles. At one end, there is Zara, a wildly talented fellow intern, who is both the magazine’s only Black employee and the lone voice against the publication's mealy-mouthed post-election attempt at “resistance.” At the other, there are Jason and Paula, a glamorous couple with loose ties to the magazine who take Luca under their wing. He is transfixed by them, their effortless beauty and easy wealth; that summer, he accepts an invitation to join them at their home in Maine, and this, nearly halfway through the slow-burning, sometimes-florid novel, is where the book takes off. At first, Maine is idyllic, a blissed-out dreamscape of adulthood, but as the weeks pass into months, their relationships begin to show subtle signs of strain. But it is only when tragedy strikes back in New York that the spell is broken and Luca is left to reckon with himself—and choices he hadn’t realized he was making.
A small book about small things that becomes a big book about everything.Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18859-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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
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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