Tantalizing prose carries what is essentially a cautionary tale about unintended consequences; Calder is worth watching.
The narrator of British author Calder’s eerie dystopian novel is a young woman living on an isolated island within sight of a mainland ravaged by infection.
The novel’s greatest draw is the woman’s enthralling voice, archaically formal and casually poetic. Whether her story makes sense or should be trusted is another matter. She avoids explaining why she’s ended up on the island, secure in a well-stocked bunker under a disintegrating ancient castle. Her sole companion is handsome, mysterious Crevan, who joined her some time ago and calls her Kit though it’s not her name. Although she sometimes, creepily, calls him daddy, he is clearly not her father. Nor are they lovers, although the sexual tension can grow intense. She prefers not to dwell on risk and considers Crevan paranoid. He repeatedly promises he will never hurt and always protect her, but she doesn’t trust stories about his previous life and how he was forced to kill in self-defense. Still, she’s fascinated by his explanations of the strange tattooed patches pricked onto his arm while he was a captive of what they both call backbiters, former doctors now “a-hunting” human blood. Why they’re doing so remains initially unclear, although Kit occasionally breaks away from personal obsessing to deliver treatises on how humankind has reached “the end of days” because science has lost the battle against devouring bacteria that attack not only people, but, more disastrously, plastic. Meanwhile, Kit’s happy on the island and drawing closer to Crevan. Then a half-dead woman shows up to disrupt, possibly infect Kit and Crevan’s uneasy paradise, and Kit discovers she’s willing to do almost anything to survive. Although Calder missteps with an unfortunate last plot twist into psychological melodrama, the bulk of her novel plays cleverly with contagion and bacteria as metaphors for the spread of both good and evil.
Tantalizing prose carries what is essentially a cautionary tale about unintended consequences; Calder is worth watching.Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9781419764660
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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