An intriguing but uneven modernist-tinged tale about a frustrated man.
A baby boomer makes his way through life and a television career in this debut novella.
Born to a working-class Italian American family in Brooklyn on the cusp of World War II, the unnamed narrator of this story grows up in a claustrophobic world of small, crowded apartments and sprawling extended families. A multiethnic kettle of Italian, Jewish, Black, German, and Russian residents, his neighborhood is a place of discovery for the boy while the Roman Catholic Church and the girls in his class prove dual sources of mystery. Then, in the seventh grade, his family relocates to a larger home in Queens—much to his chagrin. Upset over the move, he consoles himself with trips to the local movie house and library. The bookworm does not attend college after high school but instead goes to work at a series of jobs he doesn’t like—carpenter, stock boy, bank agent. “Coming off the beat generation,” he reflects, “I was more than beat. I was confused as to which direction to best cast my lot in life. Having been given none of the enormous perplexities, I would have to face on the abstract road lying ahead.” After an unsuccessful stint in the Navy and a few rocky romantic relationships, he winds up back in New York City, enrolled in the Electronics Circuits and Systems Program at the RCA Institute. From there, he has an opportunity to work as a colorist in TV production, just as he begins to start a family of his own. Has he finally found his true calling, the thing that will silence the doubts and dissatisfaction that have categorized his life up until now? Or is he fated to remain perpetually stuck between where he’s been and where he wants to go?
Violandi’s oblique prose is reminiscent of high modernism, particularly James Joyce. Here, he describes going to confession as a boy: “Roman Catholic at this tender age. One in good standing, I entered the confessional with apprehension, chastity and Priapus in hand. Confessing touching number one. When confirmation rolled around, I’d change my tune to confessing impure thoughts. Feeling more comfortable with the latter, for its truth.” There are some fun and surprising turns of phrase as well as some other eye-catching stylistic flourishes, such as annotations explaining the childhood cartoons and pop hits he references throughout the text. The world of TV production—when it’s presented in any detail—is engagingly antiquated. Unfortunately, there is not a lot to the book apart from its slippery prose. There’s little plot and insufficient character development—even the protagonist remains hardly known to readers, hidden behind the text’s indirect narration. Though the novella is only 123 pages, its dense aimlessness makes it feel quite a bit longer. The author rarely offers scenes and instead tells the whole story as continuous, discursive exposition. Readers will be disinclined to care much about the protagonist, and Violandi gives them few reasons to change their minds.
An intriguing but uneven modernist-tinged tale about a frustrated man.Pub Date: June 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-29125-3
Page Count: 123
Publisher: KDP
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2022
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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