An astute critique of entrenched power.
An architect’s travails.
Award-winning Canadian novelist Lambert weaves a hypnotic narrative, smoothly translated from French by Winkler, about greed and inequality, hypocrisy, and, not least, a “dangerous notion of purity” emerging from vociferous public clamor. The novel is centered on internationally acclaimed architect Celine Wachowski, renowned for her design of New York and Tokyo skyscrapers; the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim Museum; and luxury residences in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and the Hamptons, for clients including Sigourney and Meryl, Madonna and Julianne. The host of a Netflix series, Old House, New House, Celine congratulates herself on educating viewers about “architecture, design, urbanism, and the history of little-known cultures.” As the novel opens, she is overseeing the construction of a vast complex in the outskirts of her native Montreal for the headquarters of the corporate monolith WeBuy. Located on “unceded Indigenous territory,” the complex, she feels certain, will revive a decrepit area, commercially and aesthetically. She is unprepared, then, for the eruption of protests against the building and, soon, against her. A two-part New Yorker article digs deeply into her work and life, underscoring the “social cost” of her creations, which are “reserved for only a tiny segment of the population,” accusing her of exploitation, racism, and sexism. Older intellectuals sign editorials excoriating capitalist ideology; “young detractors and women who spoke up called her an abuser, she had committed symbolic rape….” Well versed in the theoretical underpinnings of social and cultural debates, Lambert skewers “the fascist old guard that is behind the current right-thinking left”; the pretensions of the conspicuously virtuous, such as Celine’s employee who carries a vegan leather bag and dresses “in an armour of European linen made 50 percent from sustainable materials”; and Celine’s slippery, self-serving transformation.
An astute critique of entrenched power.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781771966207
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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
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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