A dark, powerful novel traces the trajectory of a murder victim’s life.
A moving but disturbing novel tells the story of a young woman’s descent into addiction and sexual violence.
This impressive debut novel opens with a gruesome murder, then moves back in time to recount how the lives of a “throwaway” young woman and a serial killer intersected. Chadburn builds her story around a real case, that of Vancouver pig farmer Willie Pickton, who confessed to having killed 49 women, many of them Indigenous and/or sex workers, over two decades before his arrest in 2002. The novel’s fictional main character is Marina Salles, who, at age 18 becomes both Pickton's last victim and his avenger thanks to an aswang, a supernatural creature from the folklore of the Philippines (who’s also an occasional narrator). Marina’s grandmother is Filipina, and she provides a warm household in central California during the girl’s childhood in the 1980s. But when Mutya, Marina’s restless, self-centered mother, moves to Los Angeles with a boyfriend, Marina in tow, their lives begin to unravel. The boyfriend bails, and Mutya’s addictions lead her to sex work; one night when Marina is 13, she brings the girl with her to a party, with disastrous results. Marina finds herself in foster care, cut off from both mother and grandmother and trying to figure out the harsh rules of her new environment. The foster facility she’s in turns out to be a training ground for drug use and sex work. While there, she falls in love with Alex, another girl, but their relationship is a short moment of sweetness in Marina’s journey to her fate. Chadburn’s prose is sometimes lovely, always compelling, and she handles multiple storylines skillfully. Marina is engaging and heartbreaking, and other characters are vividly portrayed as well—including Pickton. The novel is a relentless revelation of the everyday exploitation of girls and women, but readers should be aware that it describes rape and other forms of violence in horrific detail, over and over.
A dark, powerful novel traces the trajectory of a murder victim’s life.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-3742-7775-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
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
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
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