A punchy, aching meditation on the stories we inherit and the stories others place upon us.
A graduate student travels across the world to establish independence from her immigrant family—but finds herself unable to outrun her inheritances.
The Malaysian Australian narrator of Yu’s novel—referred to only as “Girl”—is pursuing a Ph.D. on Sylvia Plath when, out of the blue, she’s awarded a Commonwealth scholarship and invited to a residency in Scotland, where she plans to write a postcolonial novel. Once there, she’s met with a slew of well-meaning yet deeply painful microaggressions. Struggling to write, often finding her novel and Ph.D. topics “embarrassing,” she spends much of her time reflecting on her family back in Australia—Ma, Ikanyu, and Ah Ma—who are simultaneously loving and overbearing. Girl grapples with the burden of being a second-generation immigrant expected to be wildly successful; she recalls the tough-love attitude with which her grandmother raised her and contemplates the tricky relationship between herself and her mother: “She couldn’t completely understand me because she only understood me through the lens of herself. I was her double, her antagonist and her everything. It made me want to vomit and rise to the occasion.” Yu’s novel succeeds best in its examination of family ties and immigrant legacy—in what ways does Girl mimic or reject the behaviors and expectations of her family?—as well as in its stringent critique of the current cultural and political climate, shown primarily through Girl’s conversations with fellow artists at the residency who consider diversity a “trend.” But the novel’s critique can sometimes become a little too involved in its own ironies, too complicatedly satirical for its own good: After receiving flowers from a program director whose intentions Girl is suspicious of, she wonders, “Was the vase racist? Could a specific breed of flower and type of vase be racist? I hated that I would also wonder about that.” Considerations like these, amusing yet superficial, threaten to dull the sharpness of her more exacting analyses.
A punchy, aching meditation on the stories we inherit and the stories others place upon us.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781951213985
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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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