A slow-burning debut that keenly dissects privilege, power, and the devastation of unfulfilled expectations.
One day changes the lives of a working-class Manhattan father and daughter forever.
Martin, a longtime super in an Upper West Side apartment building, has been hearing the voice of a recently deceased tenant. Lily was Martin’s longtime friend and a pseudo-grandmother to Ruby, his 24-year-old daughter; Ghost Lily is now haunting Martin in both menial and meaningful ways. Ruby—who is newly single, unemployed, and deeply in debt—has just moved back in with her parents. Primarily set in the apartment building, the novel takes place over the course of one day. While Martin fields calls from tenants with innocuous and embarrassing requests, Ruby prepares for her interview for her dream job at the American Museum of Natural History—and a penthouse party that evening at her best friend Caroline’s apartment. When the interview (that Caroline has helped secure) is not what Ruby expected, she begins to recontextualize her childhood and lifelong friendship with Caroline. At one point Ruby compares their relationship to a diorama (her preferred art form): “Lovingly crafted, deeply illusory, a lifelike depiction of something already extinct.” Ruby grew up brushing shoulders with the wealthy and thus is less able to distinguish the class markers that separate them—an inability Martin cannot fathom or stomach. When a tenant asks him to dispose of a pigeon nest, Martin angrily remembers what he’s done in the past to keep this job and support Ruby: “He wanted to tell her there were some kinds of debt she didn’t even realize she owed, debts no dream job would pay back.” The strained father-daughter relationship eventually boils over, and Martin's and Ruby’s decisions set into motion a series of events that upend their lives forever. Conell’s debut perfectly captures the co-op’s ecosystem and the ways class informs every interaction, reaction, and relationship inside it. While the plot sometimes dips a little too far into the absurd, Conell’s writing remains cleareyed, darkly funny, and deeply empathetic.
A slow-burning debut that keenly dissects privilege, power, and the devastation of unfulfilled expectations.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984880-27-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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