An engaging but slow-paced tale about a man searching for his roots.
In this novel, an American orphan travels to Kenya and makes startling discoveries about his family pedigree.
Jude Wilson is abandoned as a baby and fortunately adopted by Tom and Doris. Jude is lovingly raised in Clarksville, Washington, a “placid, unassuming town.” His childhood is a happy, comfortable one, and he joins the Boy Scouts—his father is a scoutmaster—and learns to adore the outdoors. Despite being a Black youth in “lily-white Clarksville,” he’s largely untouched by the experience of racism and doesn’t seem particularly motivated to uncover his familial roots. But after Conor McKittrick, an old friend from high school, dies of cancer, Jude is inspired to seize the day and travel to Kenya to visit the graves of Lord Baden-Powell and Capt. Tom Wilson, both seminal figures in the history of the Boy Scouts. But Jude isn’t a worldly man—he’d never been on a plane before—and his naïveté makes him easy prey for criminal opportunists. In Kenya, he is drugged and robbed by a taxi driver and then arrested when he’s mistaken for a fugitive terrorist. But he meets a young man of Somalian descent, Qadir Mohamed, also an orphan, who might hold the key to unlocking the secrets of Jude’s lost past, a plot twist tenderly limned by Githaiga. The author is at his best depicting the experience of alienation: Qadir is doubly dislocated since his parents died when he was young, and as a Somalian, he routinely encounters prejudice in Nairobi. In addition, Githaiga has a keen eye for the ways in which an insidious brand of racism can exist beneath the surface of easily visible bigotry. Unfortunately, the plot ambles along at an unhurried pace. Moreover, the book’s obvious ending seems emotionally contrived, more formulaically cinematic than authentic.
An engaging but slow-paced tale about a man searching for his roots.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73504-174-2
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Bon Esprit Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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