A thoughtful and affecting dystopian parable.
In Saunders’ speculative novel, a girl with unusual abilities comes of age in a misogynist society after her mother is jailed for “seagull terrorism.”
The story opens with the young, unnamed protagonist suffering from a spontaneous skin rash sprouting bird feathers; such strange physical transformations, which she calls “leaky boundaries,” trouble her throughout her life. At one point, she feels goldfish suddenly appear in her stomach; at another, she vomits staples while at work. When she was little, her mother, Shirley Jones, was hauled away by authoritarian “blue-uniforms”; she’s one of many women who’ve been accused of poisoning birds as a terrorist act, sometimes causing them to act violently—though it becomes clear that the real reason that animals are acting so strangely is due to massive pollution, caused, in part, by the manufacture of “POP’S COLA.” As a young woman, the protagonist becomes involved with an unnamed, self-centered musician; when he gets a job with a group of Elvis impersonators, she follows him to desolate High Plains, Nevada, where their relationship deteriorates. At its best, Saunders’ tense prose calls to mind the experimental work of Renee Gladman, and her worldbuilding recalls J.G. Ballard, as when a band of protestors joyfully documents the death of a cow on their cell phones: “What are you filming? the woman asks…Decay, they say, not looking up.” The imagery is simultaneously off-kilter and razor-sharp (“The reporter’s voice cuts into the girl’s ears like steel whorls. Stepping outside, she can taste the sea, its blue relief, and hear the rattling of animals in the bushes”), which makes the main character’s journey consistently compelling and dreamlike. The society in which the protagonist lives, which detests women and cracks down on even mild dissent, is sketched with little subtlety at times (one protestor’s sign states, “EXCLUSIVELY BLAMING WOMEN IS A CRIME ITSELF”), but it feels grimly familiar. The novel’s insights into toxic masculinity are especially cogent; the cultish, all-male “All-Elvis enclave” is initially amusing, but its corrupting influence on the main character’s boyfriend—who shows increasing contempt for her, and for all women, as the narrative progresses—gives the joke a jagged edge.
A thoughtful and affecting dystopian parable.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781573662086
Page Count: 159
Publisher: Fiction Collective 2
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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