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VICTORY PARADE

Savage and soulful.

The latest from graphic novelist Corman is a macabre meditation on cruelty and camaraderie, cycling through a cast of mostly Jewish characters amid the horrors of World War II in New York City, Berlin, and a liberated concentration camp.

Rose Arensberg works in the shipyards of 1943 Brooklyn, helping the war effort (and enduring sexual harassment) alongside other women as their husbands fight overseas. She has begun an affair with George, a veteran who lost part of his leg in the war; despite their passion, both know they are on borrowed time until Sam, the husband Rose never intended to marry, returns from the European front. Living with Rose, Sam, and their daughter is a young woman named Ruth, who fled Germany during the Nazis’ extermination of Jews in that country—Rose and Sam took Ruth in because of their shared heritage. Ruth nurses a bloodlust borne of enduring her family’s annihilation back in Germany (her mother’s restless spirit visits sometimes). Birnbaum, an enterprising fellow survivor of antisemitic pogroms, steers rageful Ruth into work as a professional wrestler he dubs “the Killer Kraut” to rile up his American crowd. Doom pervades the book, with characters falling into grotesque nightmares of dismemberment or drowning, engaging in physical combat, or meeting sudden deaths. Even after death, characters continue on, meeting loved ones or friends or spirit beings, the dead experiencing the freedom and communion and vengeance denied them in life. It is a brutal catharsis in a bloody, desperate, and haunted world. Corman’s figures are striking, with angular bodies and faces, the latter punctuated by downturned lips and enormous eyes ringed by darkness. Vivid watercolors enhance the uncanny atmosphere, hues spilling and pooling into visceral shapes and strata.

Savage and soulful.

Pub Date: April 2, 2024

ISBN: 9780805243444

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Schocken

Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024

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THE WOMEN

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

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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

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THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

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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