A somewhat scattered but endearing romp.
In Ferrone’s novel, an adult high school dropout earning her GED reflects on life’s lessons.
Twenty-nine-year-old Doreen Kablowski’s unique take on life shines through in the autobiography she’s writing as a requirement to get her high school equivalency degree. Although she grew up in Orlando, Florida, she writes of not having “a Disney-type of experience when I was growing up as a little girl…it would have been better if I had no father because there was nothing magical about him.” She’s in recovery as a glue-huffing addict; she hasn’t done it for more than a year, but she started at age 6. “All’s I know is that the shouting and crashing and hiding and running all felt a little less bad with a hit of rubber cement.” After dropping out of school in ninth grade, her life winds through a marriage and a life in the Berkshires, through a string of bad relationships, and onto a Greyhound bus back to her home city. Things take a detour after a love-at-first-sight meeting with Augusto, an undocumented worker at a Wawa convenience store in Jacksonville, Florida. Later, on the way to Orlando alone, she meets a kind older man named Rajiwho takes her to his ashram; there they meet Saul, the cousin of the ashram’s deceased founder. This unlikely trio form a strong bond and move to Orlando together, where Doreen and Raji join Narcotics Anonymous and Doreen gets a job playing Snow White at Disney World, all while struggling to move forward in her life. Readers may find the narrative structure of Ferrone’s novel to be confusing at times, with its conversational, stream-of-consciousness style, but the approach does convey Doreen’s perspective well. The realistic details of her life as a Disney princess can be amusing: “As Snow White you’re not supposed to haul off and punch somebody in the face even if they have it coming because it could scare the kids.” Overall, Ferrone’s protagonist proves to be an engaging character, and readers will root for her success as she struggles to get her life together.
A somewhat scattered but endearing romp.Pub Date: March 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781990700286
Page Count: 195
Publisher: Life to Paper Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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