A detailed tale of the powers of thought, chance, and love.
Debut author Vernieri presents a character-driven Spanish-language novel about an imaginative young woman.
ArgentinianLina Guzmán has always been introverted, but if she finds a quiet space, she can transport herself to Planeta Lina: an imagined fantasy locale that she finds far more interesting than her real life. She also ponders philosophical questions, such as “¿Quién dice qué es lo real y qué no lo es?” (“Who is to say what is real and what is not?”) The problem is that she can’t spend all her time on creative activities, such as writing and drawing. These are nice hobbies, she thinks, but not typically practical; her parents want her to study medicine or architecture. Her life’s winding journey eventually takes her to Europe and Africa. In a parallel storyline, readers meet Cuban-born, Florida-raised Johnny Barkley, who’s giving a speech in New York City. He’s developed a method to fight drug addiction that he discovered during a lucid dream. His technique has had good results, but despite his success, he’s troubled by his lack of a serious romantic relationship. But after he picks up a book in the airport titled El Hèroe, he’s so taken with it that he feels compelled to track down the author; this quest brings him into contact with Lina. Vernieri effectively portrays Lina as always open to new possibilities; even relatively small experiences can have an immense effect on her. A simple kiss prompts her to comment that “mi cuerpo temblaba como una hoja, mi alma vibraba en plenitud” (“my body shook like a leaf, my soul vibrated”). As with Johnny’s story, external events play their role, but it’s internal developments that generate the most intriguing questions. When Johnny has his dream, for instance, it involves taking an imaginary pill; its real-world inspirational effect may strike readers as simultaneously possible and impossible. Some of Johnny’s backstory feels long-winded (as when the reader is informed of his mother’s many struggles escaping Cuba); however, when the novel tackles the odder aspects of the mind, it does so eloquently.
A detailed tale of the powers of thought, chance, and love.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4269-1548-2
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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