This unique hero takes the story to dangerous places, both in England and abroad.
A gay English youth comes of age in the 1960s in Nochtree’s novel.
England, 1961: Mark Martin is a teenager who lives with his mother. Mark’s current situation is summed up thusly: “He hated his life, he hated the flat, he hated this city, he hated his school, he hated his mother. He hated himself.” Mark is attracted to other boys; considering the laws and social norms of the time, he does not exactly go around announcing this. One day, while in town, he learns of a local pub where gay men hang out called The Vault. When Mark is offered a fiver there for sex, he accepts. (Five pounds is a lot of money in his world and he enjoys the sex, so why not?) Mark winds up doing this regularly and becomes attached to one of the patrons, who goes by the name Pip. He also gets a part-time job at the nearby Frank’s Fish’n’Chips. (Frank’s does not pay as much as sex work, but it gives Mark a cover for his newfound income.) Through Frank’s, he meets a boy named Tommy, and Tommy and Mark become secret boyfriends. Eventually, Pip gets Mark a job at the car dealership that he runs. Pip and Mark form their own lasting relationship. As Mark manages to balance school, Tommy, Pip, and the occasional inquiries of his mother, things seem to be going well. But disaster soon strikes: After an incident with another rent boy, Mark sees no other option but to flee the country with Pip.
Mark is hardly the typical hero for a narrative that, in the second half of the book, morphs into something of an adventure story as he ventures far from home with a man who may or may not be trustworthy (though it is established early on that Pip is involved with business somewhere around Indonesia, the nature of this business is kept a secret). The first half of the story is chock-full of inviting tension—most of this comes from Mark’s chosen profession. How long can he keep up the life of a secret sex worker? But as sticky as Mark’s problems are, the story does have its share of dull moments. Mark puts out a fire at Frank’s before it can spread and destroy the whole building; this action is covered extensively and then spoken about again and again by different characters. When one of his schoolmates picks up the local paper, “There on the front page was a large photograph of Mark, smiling uneasily with Mam’s arm round him and a big grin on her face.” While Mark’s actions and the ensuing excitement have their place in the overall narrative, it is not a particularly engaging incident for the reader. Nor are many of the events that follow, such as when Mark receives an award at school for his bravery. (Mark is told of the badge he receives, as if it were not obvious, “It’s awarded for special achievements.”) Still, as Mark’s world constantly changes, readers will be curious to see where he will ultimately wind up.
This unique hero takes the story to dangerous places, both in England and abroad.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798333378040
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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
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