A varied and well-written collection despite the disappointing portrayals of women.
A debut volume of short stories focuses on history, glamour, and crime in America and abroad.
Maitland-Lewis’ collection opens with a fictional episode in the life of Ernest Simpson, the ex-husband of Wallis Simpson, whose divorce allowed her to marry former British King Edward VIII in 1937. Now 62 years old, Ernest is down on his luck—his tie is “tied in a strategically positioned Windsor knot to mask its frayed places,” and his Manhattan rent is in arrears. He wants a famed New York City newspaper to, among other things, pay him and help him write his memoir in exchange for providing letters that show he “changed the history of the world.” This claim piques the interest of the paper’s editors to learn what these documents offer. “Mr. Simpson” is one of many pieces of historical fiction in this collection that involve royalty, Nazis, and/or Ivy League universities. Although one story is set on a decidedly stark New Zealand sheep farm, most locations glitter, including a five-star hotel in Geneva, a Fifth Avenue co-op, and a sun-drenched California freeway (with a bright red Ferrari, no less). The writing is clean and strong, and the ages of the central characters span from college age to a certain age and nine decades or older. High-end product placement permeates the volume—for example, a dowager wears vintage Cartier diamond jewelry, a man admires his new Patek Phillipe watch, and a woman sports thigh-high Saint Laurent boots. Themes of loss (money, lovers, youth) and unrealized potential weave through the intriguing and wide-ranging stories, as do incidents of blackmail and experiences with antisemitism. But with few exceptions, women fare poorly in the tales. Female characters include a nymphomaniac, strippers, sex workers, a former porn star, a woman who fakes a pregnancy to trap a rich husband, a would-be murderer, a successful killer, and a “fat, bulbous”-lipped girlfriend who’s “a pain in the ass.” One character pretty well sums up the treatment of women in the book with this statement: “Women are like mangoes. They are either green, ripe, or rotten.”
A varied and well-written collection despite the disappointing portrayals of women.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hildebrand Books
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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