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WE MEASURE THE EARTH WITH OUR BODIES

A smart, sweeping story about the abuse and transformation of a culture stripped of its country.

The aftereffects of the oppression of Tibetans across two continents and six decades powers this domestic epic.

Lama’s debut novel opens in 1960, a decade after China’s invasion of Tibet and shortly after a quelled uprising and exile of the Dalai Lama. Lhamo and Tenkyi, two sisters, are forced to leave for a refugee camp in Nepal and orphaned not long after. From there, the girls’ paths diverge: Lhamo remains in Nepal as the camp becomes a tent city, has a daughter, and attempts to maintain the spiritual traditions stamped out by the Chinese. Bookish Tenkyi, meanwhile, leaves for Canada and, by 2012, takes in Lhamo’s daughter, Dolma, an aspiring scholar of Tibetan culture. The non-Tibetan academics Dolma meets are knowledgeable but also condescending, and Westerners’ callousness toward her heritage is symbolized by a statue of a “Nameless Saint” that Dolma believes is a stolen family heirloom. Dolma’s investigations bring her deeper into her family history, the ethically messy artifacts trade, and Tibetan spirituality, culminating in a trek to the edge of the country she’s exiled from. Lama’s delivery can be somewhat stiff—romantic interludes feel flat, and Dolma’s dialogue is sometimes sodden with explication of Tibetan political history and spiritual practice. But the novel thrives as a story about sisterhood, parenthood, and the heart-piercing feeling of exile. Dolma can’t bring herself to admire Toronto’s “Little Tibet” neighborhood, which she sees as a “copy of a copy of home. Another temporary stop in an endless journey.” (The frustrations are exemplified by Tenkyi's dashed hopes of becoming a teacher; she works as a hotel housekeeper.) And Lama wisely gives the novel multiple narrators—Lhamo, Tenkyi, Dolma, and Samphel, a childhood friend of the sisters—who capture the breadth of Tibetan culture and the range of emotional impacts of separation.

A smart, sweeping story about the abuse and transformation of a culture stripped of its country.

Pub Date: May 17, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-63557-641-2

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022

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THE WOMEN

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

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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

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INTERMEZZO

Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.

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Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.

Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.

Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024

ISBN: 9780374602635

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024

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