A flawed but engaging novel about a romantically fraught period abroad.
In Hess’ literary novella, a man in the midst of a marital crisis looks to a decades-old diary for guidance.
Married Manhattanites Brant and Lloyd have temporarily moved to Delhi for Lloyd’s work. They should be having the time of their lives in the beautiful, ancient city, but Brant is consumed by grief and guilt: grief over the recent death of his mother and guilt that his grief drove him to cheat on Lloyd with another man. While Lloyd works, Brant gardens, until one day he discovers an old diary buried in the dirt. Written in 1945, it’s the account of a woman named Carol, who also found herself in Delhi due to her husband’s job. “He hasn’t touched me in a year,” writes Carol. “I hate him for that. I blame it on his work, but who knows. I’ve stopped trying. My mother told me sex was the least important part of a happy marriage. I’m really stuck here.” Brant becomes absorbed by Carol’s tale and its similarities to his own life, but when reading of Carol’s infidelity leads Brant to confess his own affair to Lloyd, he finds his story and Carol’s increasingly—and disastrously—intertwined. Hess’ deliberate prose effectively captures Brant’s emotional state, as when he excavates the diary: “The sun burned and he dug quickly seeing the back, the edges, the circumference. He pressed away more earth, then wrenched the thing free. It was sheathed in plastic, protected from the elements like some sacred text. He held it in his hands and it felt warm, pulsing with life.” The plot is a bit too contrived, unfortunately. Despite imbuing the journal with great significance (and having nothing better to do all day), Brant seems to read the diary over the course of many weeks instead of all at once. The story twists and heightens in a way that buoys the reader along, but it fails to leave an emotional impression.
A flawed but engaging novel about a romantically fraught period abroad.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781608642670
Page Count: 130
Publisher: REBEL SATORI PRESS
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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