A richly textured saga of a gay everyman moving from self-doubt to pride.
A gay man searches for love in post-Stonewall New Orleans in Lee’s brooding romance.
In 1946, Leo Marble, still ensconced in his mother Louisa’s womb, mystically imbibes a gay sensibility straight from a performance of the Broadway musical Carousel. Growing up in Beau Pre, Mississippi, Leo develops a fine singing voice just in time to star in a high school production of Carousel, which makes the girls swoon over him; he dutifully goes steady with one as “camouflage” while secretly pining for a football player. College brings Leo’s first requited—but chaste—relationship with a man. After graduating, Leo moves to New Orleans to write for the Times-Picayune and dives into the city’s thriving gay bar and disco scene. He also joins the New Orleans Gay Resources Coalition, where he mans the volunteer help line and organizes a march to protest the anti-gay rights campaign of entertainer and orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant. Heading into the 1980s, lonely Leo hunkers down as the AIDS epidemic rages but finally finds love with handsome TV weatherman Jay Wilkinson. Lee’s portrait of Leo’s life is subdued but well observed (the author adds a touch of magical realism) as the narrative traces the gay community’s modern success story. Apart from one incident in which he is tackled by a heckler at a demonstration, Leo personally faces little overt homophobia and seems to easily surmount the crumbling barriers to inclusion. (A series of coming-out scenes with family and co-workers all go well; even elderly Granny Marble gushes with acceptance.) The novel’s drama comes mainly from Leo’s anxieties over a future that seems uncertain and loveless, which Lee depicts in plangent, evocative prose (“He could turn on the gas from one of the burners, lie down and just go to sleep. He hadn’t figured out what would happen after that”). He’s not all that majestic, but readers will root for Leo as he struggles to shake off his isolation and embrace life.
A richly textured saga of a gay everyman moving from self-doubt to pride.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781956440935
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Madville Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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