An engrossing tale about fighting for survival and finding love.
In this novel, a teenager comes of age under the most turbulent family circumstances.
Charlie, aka Moon, is a 13-year-old boy running away from home at the beginning of Habeeb’s story. Not only is Moon fleeing his family, he is also reinventing himself with his new name. Prior to decreeing himself Moon, he was labeled a “loser, faggot, pussy, weirdo.” In choosing his own name, Moon acknowledges that “the moon and I had a lot in common: Bullied by meteors and space junk, the moon carried scars and bruises.” Moon leaves home and travels to Venice Beach in California for a plethora of reasons, including his abusive father and alcoholic mother. As Moon tries to survive on the streets, he is offered money and shelter in exchange for sex work, which he soon escapes when he lands at a shelter for adolescents. It is at the shelter that Moon meets Renata, a counselor who looks out for him and makes him feel safe and loved. But he soon begins to hang out with her son, Ben, who inadvertently introduces him to a drug dealer who solicits Moon to sell marijuana. It is only when Moon is finally able to admit to both Ben and Renata that he feels loved by them that he has the opportunity to change his life. Habeeb’s engaging novel skillfully explores the dark underbelly of growing up in an abusive household and trying to choose a new family. Moon’s early life experiences are full of trauma and pain. “When kids run away from home,” he reflects at the beginning of the book, “people try to find them and send them back. It apparently never occurs to them that kids run away for a reason, and because running away is difficult and scary that reason must be a damn good one.” The author deftly concocts an emotionally tumultuous narrative with an array of misfits and outcasts who come together out of both necessity and love. While the story can sometimes seem a bit overwhelmed by hardship and misfortune, Habeeb expertly balances Moon’s various crises with sincere connections between the main characters. Readers will root for the hero’s success and safety.
An engrossing tale about fighting for survival and finding love.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-57-869061-9
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2021
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
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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