Irish in its lyricism and landscape, universal in its portrayal of the vagaries of the heart.
How much agency does a person have, especially in moments of turmoil, is the question at the heart of Kennedy’s first volume of short stories, set in a contemporary Ireland divided by wealth and education.
Characters here are defined as straining to get by or complacently secure. In “Hunter-Gatherers,” a bookish woman new to rural life is aggravated both by her gamekeeper husband’s inept attempts at “self-sufficiency” and his rich, obnoxious hunting clients; in “What the Birds Heard,” a professional in data science runs away from her husband to a gentrified cottage on the coast and into the temporary arms of a local workman who disdains her as “posh.” Feeling trapped, these and many of Kennedy’s women exhibit passive resentment toward the men in their lives. Others face their own complicity in the messes the men create. In the title story, an abandoned wife deals with the financial disaster her husband created but also her guilt at having turned a blind eye when she could have made a difference, while the mistrustful pregnant farm wife in “Imbolc” wishes she’d never suggested her husband grow pot to cover their debts. Kennedy sometimes challenges typical assumptions. In “Belladonna,” a working-class girl misreads—as does the reader—the inner workings of her neighbors’ marriage. Similarly, in “Gibraltar,” empathy shifts unexpectedly from the dissatisfied wife toward her coarse, self-made husband, who remains devoted to his unloving wife and to the daughter he knows is not biologically his. Portraits of men in emotional turmoil—particularly the forester in “Wolf Point,” who accepts that his young English wife is an unfit mother—are particularly moving in a book mostly focused on women, as are fleeting moments of union between men and women surrounding their children. “Garland Sunday,” about a damaged marriage, ends the book on an oddly hopeful note celebrating forgiveness and resilience.
Irish in its lyricism and landscape, universal in its portrayal of the vagaries of the heart.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780593540923
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
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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