There might be a movie here, Planet of the Apes as a rom-com.
Farce meets tragedy and science meets show business in this romantic triangle featuring a student, a professor, and a chimpanzee.
There’s an antic energy to Boyle's latest which comes at the expense of character development. Aimee Villard is naïve and beautiful, a college student who recognizes how attractive she is because of her effect on men—and a certain chimpanzee. Yet she refuses to use her beauty to manipulate and thus provides this novel with its heart. She is a cliché of the innocent young coed when that term was used often and seemingly without condescension. Guy Schermerhorn is a professor who's deeply invested in researching the communicative possibilities between humankind and the simian world and who parlays that work into TV appearances. After his marriage falls apart, he falls in love, or lust, with Aimee, whom he's hired to help with his live-in chimpanzee. The chimp, named Sam, also falls in love with Aimee because of the same animal magnetism that attracts Guy. As the characters in this novel respond to animal urges and instincts, Sam emerges as the most complex. Short chapters written to capture his perspective alternate with longer ones that find his human enablers attempting to deal with whatever mischief he has made. And they alternate along different timelines, with Sam’s chapters often reflecting a near future that the humans have yet to experience. Sam can talk with sign language and understand, he responds to treats and to scolding, but he also learns to lie and scheme and manipulate, aping human behavior. As Sam and Guy compete for Aimee’s affection (which she shares with both), Aimee and Guy compete for Sam’s favor. And all of them must contend with another professor, a supervisor to whom Guy reports, who is some sort of alpha male. Or maybe God—to the animals, at least. Despite his domestication, Sam occasionally shows signs of being a wild animal. This can’t end well, and it doesn’t, as a comedy of manners takes a darker turn.
There might be a movie here, Planet of the Apes as a rom-com.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-305285-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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