by Tommy Orange ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 2024
A searing study of the consequences of a genocide.
A lyrical, multigenerational exploration of Native American oppression.
Orange’s second novel is partly a sequel to his acclaimed 2018 debut, There There—its second half centers on members of the Red Feather family after the events of the first book. But Orange moves the story back as well as forward. He rewinds to 1864’s Sand Creek Massacre, in which Natives were killed or displaced by the U.S. Army. One survivor (and Red Feather family ancestor), Jude Star, is a mute man imprisoned and sent to Carlisle Indian Industrial School, one of several institutions designed to strip Native Americans of their history and folklore. As Orange tracks the generations that follow, he suggests that such schools did their jobs well, but imperfectly—essential traces of Native heritage endure despite decades of murder, poverty, and addiction. That theme crystallizes as the story shifts to 2018, depicting Orvil Red Feather’s struggles after he was shot at a powwow in Oakland, California. His path is perilous, especially thanks to a school friend with easy access to addictive pain medications. But Orvil doesn’t quite lose his grip on history, whether that’s through stories of his mother participating in the 19-month Native American occupation of Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971, or cowboys-and-Indians lore he contemplates while playing Red Dead Redemption 2. “Everyone only thinks we’re from the past, but then we’re here, but they don’t know we’re still here,” as Orvil’s brother Lony puts it. Orange is gifted at elevating his characters without romanticizing them, and though the cast is smaller than in There There, the sense of history is deeper. And the timbre of individual voices is richer, from Orvil’s streetwise patter to the officiousness of Carlisle founder Richard Henry Pratt, determined to send “the vanishing race off into final captivity before disappearing into history forever.” He failed, but this is a powerful indictment of his—and America’s—efforts.
A searing study of the consequences of a genocide.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780593318256
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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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
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Best Books Of 2015
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National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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