Fawkes shines a light on women troublemakers through time in this dazzling feminist tale.
In 1862, Sylvie Swift leaves the Kentucky farm where she was raised with her twin brother, Silas, for Nashville, where her life takes an otherworldly turn.
Following her older sister Marina’s abrupt departure years before and Silas’ decision to join the Confederate army, Sylvie finds herself alone. When an obscure play called Apocrypha mysteriously shows up on her doorstep, she begins translating it from ancient Greek. As the project develops, she begins to feel compelled to track down the anonymous sender of the script. Her instinct takes her to Nashville, which is entirely different from her bucolic home. Against the backdrop of a city struggling to control a syphilis outbreak, feed the poor, and fund the Civil War, Sylvie meets Evangeline Price, the proprietor of a brothel whose clientele includes politicians, military officers, and high-society gentlemen—and who has a curious connection to Marina. Eventually it becomes clear that there’s far more going on at Evangeline’s establishment—and, indeed, in Nashville—than it appears. As Sylvie’s translation takes shape with the help of Evangeline’s multitalented workforce, she begins to make connections between the Ephesus of the play (inspired by Aristophanes’ Lysistrata) and the Nashville underworld she becomes increasingly tangled up in—finding parallels between the Greek women (mortals and gods alike) seeking to undermine the male violence surrounding them and the women of the American South. Based on the true story of Nashville’s attempt to exile its prostitutes during the Civil War, Fawkes’ novel layers found texts—including journal entries, letters, and play scenes—to create an enchanting, immersive narrative interweaving the everyday with the fantastical and Civil War history with Greek mythology. She prompts us to question familiar notions of history and reminds us of the quiet, adaptable power of women through the ages. Sylvie learns the often-dangerous ancient ways of female rebellion but is preoccupied not by the peril of her situation, but by the absence of Marina, whose presence she feels everywhere. A riot of lust, secrets, gods, and mythical creatures make this a thoroughly entertaining novel, rich in detail and lavish prose.
Fawkes shines a light on women troublemakers through time in this dazzling feminist tale.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781419772474
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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