A haunting tale that is both despairing and inspiriting.
A medical student is assigned to a life-altering clerkship in pediatric oncology in Del Toro’s novel.
In 1995, Rudy Dell, a fourth-year medical student at the top of his class, is looking forward to a cushy clerkship at an outpatient dermatology clinic. He’s suddenly reassigned to a pediatric oncology department, however, likely because he’s paired with his best friend, Mike Davenport, the son of a billionaire in the medical insurance business roundly hated by doctors everywhere. Rudy is quickly thrust into an emotionally charged environment—all about him are children struggling to survive, flanked by their agonized parents. He befriends Maria, a 9-year-old girl in the final throes of leukemia who has no family and is a ward of the state; sadly, she seems destined to die alone. Rudy has always been a competitive student, one who routinely sees his professional commitments in careerist terms, but now he’s profoundly confronted by the obligations of his chosen vocation. “Up to this moment, everything had been a challenge. He had learned to see patients as tests of his abilities. Rudy saw them not as people, but as problems to be solved, unconsciously rationalizing away the human factor, the empathy.” The author sensitively depicts Rudy’s gathering misgivings about his choice to become a doctor and his first confrontation with genuine self-doubt. The most memorable aspect of this poignant novel, though, is the characterization of children like Maria, facing death with almost preternatural courage, often more worried about their parents than their own fate. This presentation of childhood—“innocent to the world and in the presence of magic”—is as insightful as it is heartbreaking. Occasionally, Del Toro’s writing approaches sentimental clumsiness, but he always pulls back with an admirable authorial restraint. This is a sad but hopeful book, one that impressively captures the complexity of children’s lives.
A haunting tale that is both despairing and inspiriting.Pub Date: March 20, 2020
ISBN: 9781733781930
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Del Toro Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 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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