An ambitious, acerbic, entertaining take on the film business.
This hard-edged debut looks at the power, savvy, and ugliness that go into making movies.
Nelson, an actor and playwright who has also written, directed, and produced films, deploys an insider’s knowledge of Hollywood in this story of one director being sought for two productions. In 2019, David Levit gets the call to helm the movie Coal, a prestige project, but he’ll have to deal with Jacob Rosenthal, a powerful producer known for his savage tongue and mania for control. He calls to mind the Kevin Spacey character in Swimming With Sharks. The bigger hitch is that Levit is still under contract to a producer named Brad Shlansky on a shoot that closed down for lack of money. Shlansky, a kind of Rosenthal manqué desperate for clout and respect, won’t release Levit to work on Coal. The novel’s fourth major player is Paul Aiello, a brash agent who knew Shlansky in school and now represents him while juggling a sex life increasingly marked by abusive behavior. Nelson delays the inevitable showdown by providing extensive backstories that help populate the 2019 Hollywood sections with strong characters and motives. He also flags the #MeToo movement with Aiello’s extracurriculars and a character closely drawn from Harvey Weinstein while touching on inclusiveness for people of color and women in filmmaking. The book itself is heavily male and White, but Nelson offers a few strong women, including an amusing older lawyer as verbally aggressive as Rosenthal. One of the book’s pleasures are the rants, including one from the Weinstein character that begins in classic style: "Do you have any idea what I can do to you?" Nelson is a solid writer whose dialogue is smart, pacy, and pointed. The roman à clef elements may go well beyond Weinstein—Levit seems to reflect a good bit of Nelson himself—but the novel works without such extras.
An ambitious, acerbic, entertaining take on the film business.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-951213-65-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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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