A slow fuse leads to a climactic flashpoint, putting all sorts of notions about life and art into fresh perspective.
Jangly nerves, obsessive ruminations, and a chance encounter lead a renowned film director toward unsettling developments and an unexpected epiphany.
This taut, allusive, and illuminating novel explores creativity and receptivity—the processes through which we make art and experience it. The unnamed narrator is a throwback auteur, one of the last who still shoots on film and protects the integrity of his vision against marketplace pressures and outside influence. With affection and respect, he is called “maestro” by all, including his cast and his longtime production collaborators. The novel concerns his return to an Italian film festival with his highly anticipated adaptation of William Maxwell’s novel The Folded Leaf. Among those joining him are actors Lorien and Tom, whom he generally calls “the boys” and whose careers will likely receive huge boosts from the reception the film is expected to receive. Yet the director is all jitters, unsure of that reception and of what he will do next. He takes refuge in an espresso bar, where he encounters a woman who recognizes him and who proceeds to tell (and show) him a story that will pervade the novel and, he eventually comes to hope, become his next film. With psychological acuity, the novel shows the subtle changes in their relationship, in his relationship with his two main actors (who have fallen in love after their roles in his movie brought them together), and in his love for and dependence on his husband and their young son, who remain at home while he is at the festival but are very much present in his mind. The result is a novel about a film, about a filmmaker who has adapted a novel, and about a piece of visual art and the tragic story behind it that the filmmaker fixates upon as his next project.
A slow fuse leads to a climactic flashpoint, putting all sorts of notions about life and art into fresh perspective.Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-646051-80-9
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Deep Vellum
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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