It’s rich territory, if not entirely mined.
Tensions grow between the co-founders of a hot, womencentric startup in this hyper-timely—and unexpectedly heartfelt—satire of #girlboss culture and the wellness industrial complex.
Maren and Devin are the co-founders of Richual, a social network for women. In addition to tracking your self-care habits—minutes meditated, REM sleep slept, water consumed—it was, Maren explains, the “digital sanctuary where you went to unload your pain,” mostly in the form of yoga selfies. In the unofficial org chart of Richual, it is Maren’s job to be competent and Devin’s job to be rich, charismatic, and thin. "More than work wives," Maren muses, "Devin and I were sisters." And the company is a perfect mashup of their comparative ideologies, Maren’s commitment to global social justice paired with Devin’s passion for self-care. But as the company comes under a series of extremely 2020 stresses—the novel opens with a PR disaster brought on by one of Maren’s ill-conceived tweets and culminates in a distinctly #MeToo–era crisis—their visions of what a feminist company can and should be become increasingly incompatible. Richual is a stand-in for any number of real women-led companies that sell female empowerment as an affordable luxury, and Stein sets up both the dream and the failings of this breed of corporate feminism with admirable nuance. But the book is smarter than its characters, who are exactly who you expect them to be, right down to the details meant to complicate them. This hardly takes away from the fun of the novel, which is compulsively readable, occasionally brilliant (a Vogue slideshow about their office is titled “Workplace as Vulva—And Why Not?”), and studded with genuine insight into the relationship between modern wellness and dormant rage. But the book—which leans heavily on references in lieu of precise observations—is ultimately too broad to have much bite.
It’s rich territory, if not entirely mined.Pub Date: June 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-14-313519-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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