A debut from an author to keep on your radar, assured, darkly funny, and impeccably written.
A piercing critique of the shallowness of academia and the soufflélike weightlessness of American culture.
As romans à clef go, this doesn’t get much more clef-y. A young Mexican journalist (like Medina Mora), Sebastián Arteaga y Salazar, gets a scholarship to Iowa (like Medina Mora), and, on graduating, spurns residence in the U.S. to return to Mexico City (like Medina Mora). On that scaffolding the author builds a steely-eyed but not unsympathetic portrait of the people he meets. “In Mexico, not even the oligarchs are happy,” notes Sebas, as his American friends dub him. He comes from a well-to-do household, its head a Supreme Court judge, in a country so riven by inequality that he’s moved to ask his police bodyguard, “Why haven’t the poor killed the rich already?” He arrives in the promised land of El Norte brilliantly well versed in literature, philosophy, history, art, to find most of his would-be compatriots profoundly ignorant. The Swiftian cast of characters includes the “Austro-Hungarians” of Sebastián’s privileged class and family and, in Iowa, writer wannabes dubbed “the Decanonizer,” “the Pseudo-Anthropologist,” and “the Delightful Kid from Michigan.” What he learns from those north-of-the-liners, including a girlfriend who’s a groupie of all things Latine, is that, as Habsburgian as he might be, he’s still just another brown person to them. More, after years in the U.S., “I loved America more than myself, but America didn’t love me back,” which causes him to head home, now disabused. Among many highlights: a splendid evisceration of “a Proud Boy-in-training” writing student and a superb closing paragraph that quietly evokes The Great Gatsby while being utterly original.
A debut from an author to keep on your radar, assured, darkly funny, and impeccably written.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781641295642
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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
A wistfully nostalgic look at endings, beginnings, and loving the people who will always have your back.
Exes pretend they’re still together for the sake of their friends on their annual summer vacation.
Wyn Connor and Harriet Kilpatrick were the perfect couple—until Wyn dumped Harriet for reasons she still doesn’t fully understand. They’ve been part of the same boisterous friend group since college, and they know that their breakup will devastate the others and make things more than a little awkward. So they keep it a secret from their friends and families—in fact, Harriet barely even admits it to herself, focusing instead on her grueling hours as a surgical resident. She’s ready for a vacation at her happy place—the Maine cottage she and her friends visit every summer. But (surprise!) Wyn is there too, and he and Harriet have to share a (very romantic) room and a bed. Telling the truth about their breakup is out of the question, because the cottage is up for sale, and this is the group’s last hurrah. Determined to make sure everyone has the perfect last trip, Harriet and Wyn resolve to fake their relationship for the week. The problem with this plan, of course, is that Harriet still has major feelings for Wyn—feelings that only get stronger as they pretend to be blissfully in love. As always, Henry’s dialogue is sparkling and the banter between characters is snappy and hilarious. Wyn and Harriet’s relationship, shown both in the past and the present, feels achingly real. Their breakup, as well as their complicated relationships with their own families, adds a twinge of melancholy, as do the relatable growing pains of a group of friends whose lives are taking them in different directions.
A wistfully nostalgic look at endings, beginnings, and loving the people who will always have your back.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780593441275
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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