by Nicholas Day ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 21, 2018
A short, stirring story with a unique premise.
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A man looks back at his life and loves as he awaits his death in Day’s novel.
A cartoonist named Martin, nicknamed Firecracker, recalls, “my daddy burst into flames when I was six years old.” Now an adult and married with children in Edwardsville, Illinois,Firecracker knows in his bones that “the fire is coming” and that he will one day spontaneously combust, just like his father and grandfather before him. After he heads into the Night Cap, a local dive bar, the story goes back and forth in time, focusing on Firecracker’s memories of childhood and the events of the present day in equal measure. Firecracker particularly examines love—his addiction to it and the many ways in which he has experienced it through his lifetime. He looks back on his childhood friendship with a boy named Stephen; his relationship with his wife, Emily; and a girl whose name he cannot remember but whom he knows he loved fully. In his childhood, Firecracker saw Stephen’s mother dead in her driveway; he has seen and communicated with an incarnation of Death ever since. It is in these passages with Death that the author’s descriptive prose truly shines: “Darkness and light became as a curtain, which rippled and pulled apart to reveal a human shape whose eyes shone like dying stars and whose clothes were fashioned from shadow and fog.” Firecracker’s moments with Death convey both the fear and love he feels for the specter throughout the story—Death is a nightmare-fueling figure earlier on but becomes a constant, steadying presence in Firecracker’s life. Day’s story is at times lyrical, blending prose with poetry to convey Firecracker’s more expressive, dream-like ruminations as he nears his end: “You are one of them, one of us, an infinite being / The dream never ends / None of this is real…I could finally see time for what it was. An infinite circle.” Day’s tale is a quick read, creative and addictively readable.
A short, stirring story with a unique premise.Pub Date: Dec. 21, 2018
ISBN: 9781947654792
Page Count: 98
Publisher: Bizarro Pulp Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elin Hilderbrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 11, 2024
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”
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New York Times Bestseller
A stranger comes to town, and a beloved storyteller plays this creative-writing standby for all it’s worth.
Hilderbrand fans, a vast and devoted legion, will remember Blond Sharon, the notorious island gossip. In what is purportedly the last of the Nantucket novels, Blond Sharon decides to pursue her lifelong dream of fiction writing. In the collective opinion of the island—aka the “cobblestone telegraph”—she’s qualified. “Well, we think, she’s certainly demonstrated her keen interest in other people’s stories, the seedier and more salacious, the better.” Blond Sharon’s first assignment in her online creative writing class is to create a two-person character study, and Hilderbrand has her write up the two who arrive on the ferry in an opening scene of the book, using the same descriptors Hilderbrand has. Amusingly, the class is totally unimpressed. “‘I found it predictable,’ Willow said. ‘Like maybe Sharon used ChatGPT with the prompt “Write a character study about two women getting off the ferry, one prep and one punk.”’” Blond Sharon abandons these characters, but Hilderbrand thankfully does not. They are Kacy Kapenash, daughter of retiring police chief Ed Kapenash (the other swan song referred to by the title), and her new friend Coco Coyle, who has given up her bartending job in the Virgin Islands to become a “personal concierge” for the other strangers-who-have-come-to-town. These are the Richardsons, Bull and Leslee, a wild and wealthy couple who have purchased a $22 million beachfront property and plan to take Nantucket by storm. As the book opens, their house has burned down during an end-of-summer party on their yacht, and Coco is missing, feared both responsible for the fire and dead. Though it’s the last weekend of his tenure, Chief Ed refuses to let the incoming chief, Zara Washington, take this one over. The investigation goes forward in parallel with a review of the summer’s intrigues, love affairs, and festivities. Whatever else you can say about Leslee Richardson, she knows how to throw a party, and Hilderbrand is just the writer to design her invitations, menus, themes, playlists, and outfits. And that hot tub!
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780316258876
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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