Subdued, insightful tales of characters at dark points in their lives.
Silver’s debut collection of quiet stories explores grim themes, including humankind’s propensity for violence and the inevitability of death.
Like many of the tales here, the opening story, “Outside Influence,” begins modestly and gradually turns somber. In it, an American photographer tries capturing the serenity of grazing deer before the animals shockingly turn on him. As the story progresses, more animals, and even beloved pets, become increasingly aggressive toward humans. In the more humorous title story, Ben Burton is born to parents who live in an age-restricted community. Unsurprisingly, some elderly residents object to the boy’s presence; one woman insists, “anyone who thinks I don’t like kids is dead wrong—just not in my backyard.” Perhaps the collection’s most uplifting tale is the novella Leak in the Roof, which offers selections from a celebrated fashion designer’s autobiographical manuscript. Kenny Silverman, before becoming fashion’s “enfant terrible” in the 1970s, expressed himself through poetry. The story recounts the long and difficult road he took to commercial success and how he fought for a healthier Earth along the way. Silver aptly couples sharp prose (“I was finally seeing life with a ‘what have you done for me lately?’ attitude, and not through a mind riddled with flashbacks”) with playful narrative formats throughout this collection; a few stories comprise scriptlike dialogue exchanges, and the book ends with scenes from the author’s Canada-set, Vietnam-era screenplay. There are intriguing thematic links among the tales, including examinations of American racism and environmentalism; certain character names, such as Ian, Bess, and Jonah, also recur, as do bits of Silver’s intermittent poetry (“The years whisper loneliness / Muffled by the day’s ordeals”), creating new connections.
Subdued, insightful tales of characters at dark points in their lives.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73258-928-5
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Four Seasons Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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