Melvin deftly illustrates that family alliances may be as complicated as political ones.
Violence and chicanery, love and survival, poverty and careless opulence: Everything’s in play in Melvin’s sprawling family saga set in the Philippines—her U.S. debut.
Lali and Pilar—two daughters of a political dissident who, with his family, fled their homeland for California—have fundamentally different temperaments. Outgoing Lali seeks attention and experience, while the more reserved Pilar is devoted to her family’s honor and preserving its legacy. More importantly, Lali is in a relationship with Arturo, the godson of an authoritarian strongman, their father’s rival, who shares characteristics with former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. After the girls’ father is assassinated, Arturo whisks the family to Manila and the safety that will be afforded to them as part of his family. Lali (now married to Arturo), Pilar, and their mother return to a fraught political situation, and their private lives become enmeshed in a political web of shifting alliances and byzantine dealmaking. When Lali becomes pregnant, subtle shifts occur in the balance of power (emotional and sexual) between the sisters, and both young women embark on paths unimaginable to them earlier. Grounded in the turmoil of recent political, military, and economic life in the Philippines, Melvin’s characters grapple with moral dilemmas that grow increasingly complex as their story unfolds. Themes of poverty, exploitation of women, and inhumane wartime brutality underlie the narrative, which unfolds against a backdrop of scenic beauty and rural poverty. Melvin’s storyline mines recent (and not-so-recent) Philippine history and is delivered with a healthy dose of drama, conveying a milieu where superstition and folklore can be as controlling as the gaze of television cameras. Peppered with moments of cinematic violence, the account of a family in flux also challenges readers to determine how everything changed in the family’s dynamics. As the girls’ father once observed, life is determined by a series of subtle, perhaps imperceptible ruptures that can have enormous consequences.
Melvin deftly illustrates that family alliances may be as complicated as political ones.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-60945-773-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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