A glimpse into a friendship that doesn’t hesitate to touch on joy, sadness, love, and death.
Two women, one in Los Angeles and the other on an island near Seattle, strike up a correspondence that blossoms into a deep friendship in the early 1960s.
When Miss Joan Bergstrom, then 27, sends a packet of saffron she has picked up on her travels to Mrs. Imogen Fortier, the author of a column she enjoys in Northwest Home & Life magazine, a correspondence between the two women begins. Imogen leaps into the friendship with both feet despite their 32-year age difference, as does Joan. What starts out as the occasional chat about food evolves into much more as the women expand their horizons—Joan with a new job as a reporter on the women's pages of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and an exploration of the wide variety of foods available in Los Angeles, and Imogen with new tastes and recipes that bring Francis, her husband of four decades, out of the shell he's lived in since the Great War. Author Fay has written an all-too-brief novel that explores how the women’s friendship evolves and deepens when they open up to each other. In their letters, Joan and Imogen show their true selves, exploring their experiences and their thoughts about love, mental health, sadness, difficult decisions, and unexpected joys. Fay’s touch is deft, and the information is received by both women with love and acceptance without becoming cloying to the reader. Written primarily in the form of letters sent between 1962 and 1965, the story also explores how adventures in the culinary world redefine the women's relationships with happiness, food, and new experiences. The story leaves the reader wanting more—more recipes, more letters, more time in the gentle, unfolding friendship of these two women.
A glimpse into a friendship that doesn’t hesitate to touch on joy, sadness, love, and death.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-41933-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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
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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