This unique hero takes the story to dangerous places, both in England and abroad.
A gay English youth comes of age in the 1960s in Nochtree’s novel.
England, 1961: Mark Martin is a teenager who lives with his mother. Mark’s current situation is summed up thusly: “He hated his life, he hated the flat, he hated this city, he hated his school, he hated his mother. He hated himself.” Mark is attracted to other boys; considering the laws and social norms of the time, he does not exactly go around announcing this. One day, while in town, he learns of a local pub where gay men hang out called The Vault. When Mark is offered a fiver there for sex, he accepts. (Five pounds is a lot of money in his world and he enjoys the sex, so why not?) Mark winds up doing this regularly and becomes attached to one of the patrons, who goes by the name Pip. He also gets a part-time job at the nearby Frank’s Fish’n’Chips. (Frank’s does not pay as much as sex work, but it gives Mark a cover for his newfound income.) Through Frank’s, he meets a boy named Tommy, and Tommy and Mark become secret boyfriends. Eventually, Pip gets Mark a job at the car dealership that he runs. Pip and Mark form their own lasting relationship. As Mark manages to balance school, Tommy, Pip, and the occasional inquiries of his mother, things seem to be going well. But disaster soon strikes: After an incident with another rent boy, Mark sees no other option but to flee the country with Pip.
Mark is hardly the typical hero for a narrative that, in the second half of the book, morphs into something of an adventure story as he ventures far from home with a man who may or may not be trustworthy (though it is established early on that Pip is involved with business somewhere around Indonesia, the nature of this business is kept a secret). The first half of the story is chock-full of inviting tension—most of this comes from Mark’s chosen profession. How long can he keep up the life of a secret sex worker? But as sticky as Mark’s problems are, the story does have its share of dull moments. Mark puts out a fire at Frank’s before it can spread and destroy the whole building; this action is covered extensively and then spoken about again and again by different characters. When one of his schoolmates picks up the local paper, “There on the front page was a large photograph of Mark, smiling uneasily with Mam’s arm round him and a big grin on her face.” While Mark’s actions and the ensuing excitement have their place in the overall narrative, it is not a particularly engaging incident for the reader. Nor are many of the events that follow, such as when Mark receives an award at school for his bravery. (Mark is told of the badge he receives, as if it were not obvious, “It’s awarded for special achievements.”) Still, as Mark’s world constantly changes, readers will be curious to see where he will ultimately wind up.
This unique hero takes the story to dangerous places, both in England and abroad.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798333378040
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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