A persuasive, quietly satisfying portrait of a woman's midlife crisis and the essential choices she makes.
The romance that arrives in the life of a woman moving on from her marriage turns out to be more of a problematic beginning than a happy ending.
Maud, a 40-year-old garden historian in San Francisco, has had enough of her pretense of a marriage to Peter, which also denied her the opportunity to follow her career. Now, spending the summer working on the restoration of a formal Victorian garden in New York’s Hudson Valley, and separated from her husband, she finds herself falling for Gabriel, an archaeologist who's attached to the same project. But Maud’s two daughters have arrived to join her for two months and need her attention, especially sensitive, moody 13-year-old Ella, who seems jealous of Maud and is flirting with Gabriel. The tension among the group reaches a crisis point as Peter comes to visit and Ella disappears, leading to revelations that will require Maud to stay married and put her children’s needs first. Back in San Francisco, trying to make things work with Peter and assist Ella on her long road to recovery, Maud finds a new, local restoration job involving the garden of Hispanic settlers and looks back with a critical eye on “the collateral damage of that heedless summer.” Then she meets Alice Lincoln, a wealthy artist who might underwrite the current garden project, and they become friends, distracting Maud from her musings about Gabriel, sex, and a life free from compromise. But the association with Alice leads unexpectedly to further ruptures that will blow Maud’s life open even more drastically. Delury’s sharply drawn portrait of anguish, loneliness, fear, and desire is less innovative and more slender than her noted debut, The Balcony (2018). But dodging romantic predictability while acknowledging the heart’s true priorities, it delivers an engaging new journey from ignorance to knowledge via a garden.
A persuasive, quietly satisfying portrait of a woman's midlife crisis and the essential choices she makes.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9798985282856
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Zibby Books
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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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