This sophomore effort is likely to disappoint fans of Medie’s fine debut.
When a childhood friendship sours, two young Ghanaian women are filled with confusion and spite.
Cousins Akorfa and Selasi were inseparable as children, and the friendship between their mothers guaranteed they spent lots of time together. But according to Akorfa, who tells the first half of the story, her mother always knew “that my cousin would grow up to break all that she touched, even the people who loved her.” Akorfa’s family has more money, and Akorfa is a better student than Selasi; this puts the friends on an unequal basis from the start, and Akorfa’s mean-spirited mother makes sure no one forgets it. Then Selasi’s mother dies in childbirth when the girls are 11. Her father sends her to live with her grandmother and moves on to start a new family; not long after, Akorfa’s family moves to Accra. By the time Selasi comes to visit, things have changed between them. Akorfa goes to college in the U.S., then moves there permanently. She’s married, in her 30s, and returning home for her father’s memorial when she next sees Selasi, who is ice cold. “I turned to my mother. ‘What did we do to her? I want to know. What have we done to Selasi?’ ” The next half of the book answers that question by starting the whole story over from Selasi’s point of view—not the wisest narrative choice—and following her into adulthood. A brief final section is told in third person. Following the success of His Only Wife (2020), Medie seems to have bitten off more than she can chew, with themes of sexual predation, Black life in the U.S., and Ghanaian political corruption elbowing their ways into what is already an ungainly structure for the story of a broken friendship. The resolution feels forced, with a deus ex machina introduced to inspire Akorfa and Selasi to reveal the secrets that have warped their lives.
This sophomore effort is likely to disappoint fans of Medie’s fine debut.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9781643752846
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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
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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