An ambitious, artful, and winding tale of a family in search of its moorings.
A broken family makes an uncomfortable transition into former Communist Germany in this moody debut novel.
Grattan’s family drama centers on three characters: Beate Haas, who as a girl escaped from East Germany with her parents in 1968, and the two children she later had in the United States, Adela and Michael. In 1990, with the Berlin Wall collapsed, Beate inherits her family home in Kritzhagen, a small town in the former East. Adela and Michael, 12 and 13 at the time, uneasily adjust to a place that “had gone from prom queen to old maid in a single season”: Michael keeps busy looting abandoned houses while furtively exploring relationships with men while Adela lends support to the demonized occupants of a nearby refugee camp. Beate, meanwhile, despondent after splitting with her husband, wanders the streets at night, eventually stumbling into a job cutting hair at a bar. In the early going, the book feels like a gothic novel with a Brutalist severity: The characters are so downcast and the home so haunted by the past that emotional escape seems impossible. But when the narrative leaps back into the 1970s and forward to the 21st century, the novel brightens as the characters’ motivations and experiences deepen. Michael settles into a job running a bar with a Stasi theme, Beate pursues new relationships, and Adela leaves the country just as her mom did. In the meantime, cousins and lovers provide emotional support while neofascism and homophobia buffet the family emotionally and physically. Grattan is a graceful writer and keen observer of family dynamics; the domestic themes, realist style, and emphasis on German culture can’t help but recall Jonathan Franzen. But the energy Grattan expends on characterization doesn’t quite extend to the plot, which feels shapeless despite some dramatic flare-ups. The lassitude is somewhat intentional, though: When you’re as disoriented as this clan is, Grattan suggests, there truly is no place like home.
An ambitious, artful, and winding tale of a family in search of its moorings.Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-3742-4793-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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
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
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