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A WIFE IN BANGKOK

An underdeveloped novel about finding one’s place when far away from home.

A dutiful wife and mother leaves small-town Oklahoma for Thailand in Lav’s debut novel set in the mid-1970s.

Brian Carrol accepts a job in Bangkok from an American oil and gas company. His journalist wife, Crystal, will remain in Pico City, Oklahoma with their children, Lisa and Tim, for two months while they complete the school year; then they’ll all move to Thailand to be with him. Brian never asked Crystal if she wanted to go, which she quietly laments. In Bangkok, Brian gets to know Judi, a masseuse, but turns down her sexual advances. Crystal reluctantly leaves her job, and once in Thailand with the kids, she feels isolated. Still, she develops a friendship with her maid, Nit, who hopes to attend an American university. Crystal insists on tutoring her, but Nit is unable to grasp English grammar and quits her job. Hoping to make amends, Crystal tracks down Nit’s parents, who accept the money she offers them but also berate her, noting that she knows “nothing of our lives.” Meanwhile, Brian uncovers an embezzlement scheme at his place of business, which puts the family in danger—and young Tim is briefly kidnapped. Later, Crystal discovers Brian’s secret relationship with Judi and becomes severely depressed; Brian arranges for her to return to the United States, where she’s hospitalized. Later, she returns to Bangkok, and begins writing remotely for the Oklahoma Daily. Over the course of this novel, Lav presents an ambitious tale about overstepping cultural boundaries and losing one’s autonomy within a marriage. However, some of the story’s more complex issues resolve far too easily; for instance, 8-year-old Tim is abducted for two entire days, but he recovers from the ordeal unrealistically quickly. The dialogue often falls flat, and the inner monologues are stilted and unrevealing (“I’m not sure of anything anymore. This is so hard!” Brian muses). The novel does, however, give readers an unusual glimpse of life in Thailand in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

An underdeveloped novel about finding one’s place when far away from home.

Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-63152-707-4

Page Count: 280

Publisher: She Writes Press

Review Posted Online: July 29, 2020

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BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL

A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.

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Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).

In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.

A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.

Pub Date: June 10, 2025

ISBN: 9781250320520

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025

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THE NIGHTINGALE

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

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