A well-balanced drama about memorable lovers and their uncomfortable secrets.
Cacoyannis offers a literary novel about love and infidelity in London.
Harry Wood is an English painter with a secret. Every Wednesday, he meets a woman he knows only as Lina at a hotel in Paddington in central London; the two have sex and have no interest in a relationship of any sort. What complicates matters is the fact that Harry is married to Max Steffe, the man who helped launch his successful career as an artist. Max comes from a wealthy family and is known for “wielding influence and enormous power over practically anyone and everyone who wanted to be someone in the Arts.” Harry loves Max, but it hasn’t stopped him from secretly carrying on his weekly affair for almost two years. One of Harry’s most popular paintings is of an unhoused man he knows who calls himself Gregor Horak and has an affinity for the work of Franz Kafka; Harry and Max help to get Gregor back on his feet and to achieve his dream of becoming a famous writer. They also help a friend of Gregor’s, a budding artist who goes by the name Slimboy. Things take a turn, though, when Harry gets jury duty for a murder trial. By chance, Lina is assigned to the same jury, and Harry learns from another juror, musician Jefferson Stone, that Lina is a famous documentary filmmaker. A guilty Harry stops seeing Lina, but he wonders how to break the news of the past affair to Max; to make matters even more complex, he also finds himself starting to have feelings for Jefferson. However, it soon becomes clear that his relationship with Lina may not end as easily as he thought.
Cacoyannis’ narrative focuses on Harry, who narrates the tale as he navigates the strange circumstances in which he finds himself. The story is most compelling when he discovers new facts that throw his assumptions into disarray—such as when he finds out new information from a clerk at the hotel where he has his trysts with Lina, or when it becomes clear that the first time Harry met Lina may not have been an accident. Although the novel has a fairly large cast of characters, the author effectively distinguishes each of them with small details, such as Jefferson’s hand tattoos or Lina’s penchant for the novel Lolita. However, for a narrative that involves so much deception, the novel has a tendency to repeat things that readers already know. For example, when Harry and Lina set up their first rendezvous, she explains that “There’s this hotel I know. Out of the way. Very discreet. I could meet you there next Wednesday afternoon if you like”—although, by this point in the story, readers already have intimate knowledge of every detail of the Wednesday schedule. Nonetheless, readers will find themselves slowly becoming invested in what will happen to these disparate people—who, after all, will wind up with who? Such questions keep the story alive and moving, all the way to its conclusion.
A well-balanced drama about memorable lovers and their uncomfortable secrets.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9798306638409
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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