A vital, enthralling debut in which devastating social commentary is delivered with a wink.
Mĕi Brown is a recent Dartmouth dropout working as a private chauffeur with a dodgy roster of clients—one of whom hires her to drive all the way across the country.
When Mĕi picks up 20-something Henry Lee, she can’t help noticing that he guards his enormous suitcase religiously. Although the two gradually grow closer on the long journey from San Francisco to Syracuse, trading barbs through the limo’s partition, Henry’s easy charm and good looks can’t fully alleviate Mĕi’s suspicions. She repeatedly calls her grandfather, her Lǎoyé—who’s responsible for finding her passengers looking to pay off the books—to see what he thinks about Henry. Since the death of his wife, Lǎoyé’s camped out in the family garage, smoking marijuana and watching old films, shrinking his existence to fit one room. Mĕi recalls the ways his encyclopedic knowledge of history and “ability to educate painlessly” bolstered her high school education and how his acerbic wit offered a lifeline through her teenage years; now she frets over his reluctance to leave home. Lǎoyé’s unquestioning support of her decision to drop out of Dartmouth after her father’s untimely death—buying her a car and introducing her to clients in need of a discreet chauffeur—further strengthens their bond, and she finds herself missing him terribly. With Lǎoyé’s encouragement, she continues the journey, and the lengthy stretches of driving allow Mĕi to reflect on life in the wake of her father’s passing—especially her estrangement from her mother, whose tacit acceptance of his death Mĕi can’t understand. Finally, Henry’s insistence on unusually frequent breaks leads Mĕi to confront him about his precious luggage, and once his secret is revealed she begins to see the world in a very different light. Frazier expertly weaves historic and contemporary injustices faced by Chinese Americans and Uyghurs through this fast-paced, propulsive book, which is at its most powerful when depicting the way Mĕi’s family navigates life after catastrophe. She has a knack for writing funny dialogue—scathing sarcasm underpinned by a great deal of love—and there are plenty of hilarious exchanges to lighten the dark political context of the novel.
A vital, enthralling debut in which devastating social commentary is delivered with a wink.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250872715
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”
A stranger comes to town, and a beloved storyteller plays this creative-writing standby for all it’s worth.
Hilderbrand fans, a vast and devoted legion, will remember Blond Sharon, the notorious island gossip. In what is purportedly the last of the Nantucket novels, Blond Sharon decides to pursue her lifelong dream of fiction writing. In the collective opinion of the island—aka the “cobblestone telegraph”—she’s qualified. “Well, we think, she’s certainly demonstrated her keen interest in other people’s stories, the seedier and more salacious, the better.” Blond Sharon’s first assignment in her online creative writing class is to create a two-person character study, and Hilderbrand has her write up the two who arrive on the ferry in an opening scene of the book, using the same descriptors Hilderbrand has. Amusingly, the class is totally unimpressed. “‘I found it predictable,’ Willow said. ‘Like maybe Sharon used ChatGPT with the prompt “Write a character study about two women getting off the ferry, one prep and one punk.”’” Blond Sharon abandons these characters, but Hilderbrand thankfully does not. They are Kacy Kapenash, daughter of retiring police chief Ed Kapenash (the other swan song referred to by the title), and her new friend Coco Coyle, who has given up her bartending job in the Virgin Islands to become a “personal concierge” for the other strangers-who-have-come-to-town. These are the Richardsons, Bull and Leslee, a wild and wealthy couple who have purchased a $22 million beachfront property and plan to take Nantucket by storm. As the book opens, their house has burned down during an end-of-summer party on their yacht, and Coco is missing, feared both responsible for the fire and dead. Though it’s the last weekend of his tenure, Chief Ed refuses to let the incoming chief, Zara Washington, take this one over. The investigation goes forward in parallel with a review of the summer’s intrigues, love affairs, and festivities. Whatever else you can say about Leslee Richardson, she knows how to throw a party, and Hilderbrand is just the writer to design her invitations, menus, themes, playlists, and outfits. And that hot tub!
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780316258876
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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
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