Packed with fun in every sentence, this book is the cure for your bad mood.
A very 21st-century wedding brings together a thoroughly modern cast of characters…and a nice, old-school gay book editor.
Whatever modern trend has got you down—political correctness, health and wellness, device madness, you name it—Rudnick skewers it in his latest comedy of manners. At its center is a lovely man named Rob who has recently lost his longtime partner to ALS. His best remaining friend is a personal trainer/action movie actor named Sean, whose flight attendant ex-wife, Linda, is about to marry a kinder, gentler Zuckerberg/Musk master-of-the-universe-type named Trone Meston, whose devices have completely taken over “life as we fucking know it,” which also happens to be the title of a debut novel Rob has just gotten fired over, thanks to a young “sensitivity associate” named Isabelle McNally. There are a slew of hilarious characters and connections, remarkably easy to keep straight once you’re into it but not to be further detailed here. The whole gang, it turns out, is headed to Maine for Trone and Linda’s wedding, which will also be the product reveal of the most revolutionary device Trone has ever introduced. A few examples of the bacchanalia that are Rudnick’s sentences: “Isabelle sexually experimented with a Filipina who identified as a warrior goddess, a queer man who taught her about weaving wildflower penis wreaths, and a three-person collective dedicated to having sex with food to vanquish the patriarchal miasma long associated with eclairs and body shaming.” Elsewhere: “As Linda told a friend, ‘It was like sex with the friendliest robot, that only wanted to make me come and then fill out a response card. It was great because it wasn’t really like sex, it was like—eating one of those astronaut meals from a sealed foil pouch and realizing it really did taste just like filet mignon.’” The sentences that aren’t about sex are just as good. With regard to the names Bridger and Morrow, the boy-and-girl twins of Sean and Linda: Their names “sounded like a wine cooler, a law firm on a soap opera, or animated bunnies in a Disney film.” It’s the little things and the big things. Rudnick kills.
Packed with fun in every sentence, this book is the cure for your bad mood.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781668068298
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
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
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