An imaginative and tender novel about assisted suicide.
In Castano’s literary novel, a woman intending to end her life spends a few days in a mostly abandoned shore town.
Wildwood, New Jersey no longer exists…at least, not as it once it did. Destroyed by a hurricane in 2029, it was rebuilt, only to be knocked down for good by a second storm in 2030. When 22-year-old Maya Valencia disembarks at the Wildwood bus terminal in the winter of 2035, she finds something akin to a ghost town: “Only every fourth or fifth streetlamp worked, if barely. No ambient glimmer from front porches or second-floor residences. Boards nailed over most windows. Uncle Bill’s Pancake House, bashed and looted.” She takes a room at the Sea Gull Motel, and the next morning she visits the town’s infamous Elea Clinic, known for its assisted suicide procedures. Maya suffers from multiple sclerosis, and though she hates the thought of leaving her younger sister, Celeste, alone to fend for herself, she knows Celeste will be saddled with her medical bills if she allows the disease to progress. The catch: The law requires the patient to spend four nights in New Jersey before undergoing the procedure. As Maya rides out her final days at the Sea Gull, she encounters a number of people in similar situations, including Glenn Haversham, a middle-aged failed “businessman” with a history of aggrieved partners and cheated clients trailing behind him. Glenn’s looming suicide seems like it might be an act of sheer exhaustion, but he and Maya find common ground. In this ghost town filled with soon-to-be ghosts, the normal routines of life are pulled away just enough to perhaps allow Maya to find something worth living for. Castano’s Wildwood is a truly imaginative netherworld, complete with a Death District where people can settle their affairs. Glenn encounters the former Dollar General, now “‘Parentalia Advisors—Conclusionary Consultants’,” offering “‘Wills-Insurance Advisement-Asset Transfers-Estate Planning-Tax Guidance.’ An all-you-can-eat-buffet of administrative chores.” Short but richly drawn, this is a beautiful rumination on all the things, good and bad, we leave behind.
An imaginative and tender novel about assisted suicide.Pub Date: June 3, 2024
ISBN: 9798988023432
Page Count: 200
Publisher: New Meridian Arts
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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