A blurry protagonist deals with some sharply realistic life demands.
An adopted woman wrestles with the binaries of art versus motherhood, chosen family versus found family, and social expectation versus authenticity.
On the ninth floor of a department store building on 34th street in Manhattan, Emily writes. It’s not the kind of writing she wishes she could make a living at—novels, stories, literary stuff. Rather, it’s taglines and ad copy to ensure a woman feels lacking enough in glamour to offer up a “share of her wallet” (as the CEO puts it) to buy a cashmere sweater or Chanel blouse. Emily has a photographer boyfriend, Wes, and a work BFF, Megan, whose artistic impulses are also subverted by toiling at the store. Emily's life is OK, but cracks quickly begin to show: Megan has an affair with the boss and is fired; Wes grows distant. When Emily is invited to a wedding in Italy, giving her the opportunity to revisit an area where she'd lived as a student with an alluring art historian and her young daughters, she jumps at the chance to leave her troubles behind, taking Megan along with her. When a series of life-altering events happen in Italy, Emily must confront her motherless and often rudderless past, her uncertain present, and a future in which she is pulled in a million directions so familiar to women: worker, partner, mother, friend, and maker. Prentiss’ prose is energetic and inventive, and Emily’s restless imagination can make for fun interludes, as when she imagines Megan as an angel in a painting giving her advice. However, for much of the book, Prentiss tries to present Emily as a person still figuring out who she is and who she wants to become, and the result is that Emily sometimes feels more a symbolic repository of the contemporary New York woman than a fully formed character.
A blurry protagonist deals with some sharply realistic life demands.Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781501121586
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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