Keane’s satisfying storytelling is the takeaway.
In a New York commuter town during the week of an epic blizzard, a married couple’s crisis comes to a head.
Is the Half Moon—a popular bar in Gillam—waxing or waning? And what about owner Malcolm Gephardt’s marriage? The bar has been struggling since Malcolm fulfilled his dream and bought both the business and the building, the latter against the advice of his lawyer wife, Jess. But Malcolm, 45, “handsome and charming and people liked him instantly,” who worked at the bar for 24 years before buying it, has always wanted to run the place and also feels that the expense of purchasing his baby somehow compensates for the fortune Jess has spent on IVF in pursuit of her own dream of fertility. The couple’s history is capably delivered in nonsequential descriptions and flashbacks from both perspectives. They’ve been together for 15 years, loved each other passionately from the start, married because of Jess’ pregnancy, which failed, yet lost their way in more recent times, leading Jess to move out some four months earlier. Now, as the heavy snow falls, Malcolm learns she has been seen with Neil Bratton, a recently arrived, divorced lawyer with three children and a house at the posh end of town. Family, commitment, work, and class all underpin this sympathetically drawn portrait of a stuttering marriage and also its wider community of parents, friends, and employees, although the emotional territory is less visceral than in Keane’s bestselling Ask Again, Yes, also set in Gillam. Subplots involving a missing Half Moon regular and the threatening visits of a man pressuring Malcolm to repay his debts interleave developments in the marriage. But it’s the contemplation of a meaningful relationship after early dreams have faded that best showcases Keane’s inviting empathy, even if the ending is too neatly resolved.
Keane’s satisfying storytelling is the takeaway.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781982172602
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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