A sometimes-frustrating but often effective bildungsroman.
In Sleeper’s debut novel, a young journalist travels to Japan in search of her troubled lover.
Lucy is a young woman who knows little of the world outside of books—she majored in both journalism and literature, “semi-expecting to become a reporter after college”—and she mostly keeps to herself. However, as she heads into her final year at Northwestern University in Illinois,she finds herself on a new path when her family fractures in the wake of her father’s sudden death. She also falls in love with a confident new Japanese student named Owen Ota and becomes fascinated by his home country. Owen tells her that he is a “gaijin”—a term for foreigner that some find derogatory—and even goes so far as to say that he feels out of place in his own family. Just as the college students’ relationship deepens, Owen suddenly returns to Japan, and after that, the two communicate little. Lucy becomes obsessed with finding him, and while working at the Chicago Sun-Times, she applies to be a reporter for a small newspaper in Okinawa, Japan. After she’s hired but right before she moves, she learns that Owen tried to kill himself before disappearing once again—adding yet another layer to his mystery. Sleeper’s novel is predominantly the story of Lucy's coming-of-age as she learns that the object of her obsession is far from the perfect man she imagines him to be. The author also shows how Lucy learns that reading about a foreign country doesn’t prepare an outsider for its complicated reality: “I wasn’t just a green reporter, I was a green person, a product of my insular suburban upbringing.” She uses the word sensei in reference to Owen, as she feels that he’s become her teacher in life; however, as the story goes on, the author gets across the sense that everyone Lucy encounters is her teacher, so deep is her naiveté. At times, the depiction of Lucy’s confusion can feel overly repetitive. However, by the end of the novel, Sleeper makes a strong case for adventure as the ultimate instructor.
A sometimes-frustrating but often effective bildungsroman.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947041-67-7
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2020
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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