Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT

Next book

LOLA FLORES

An intriguing, if overlong, reimaging of old-time entertainment history.

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT

In this historical novel, Perlstein chronicles the rise of a transgender performer from Havana to Hollywood.

Anshel Sobel is born in Warsaw around 1910 and raised in New York City from the age of 2 under the American name Albert. In 1929, she fakes her own death, leaves her family behind, and heads for Havana under a new name: Lola Torres. She’s a talented pianist and singer, and she finds a place to stay with the sister of the Sobels’ housekeeper. Cuba seems like a land of opportunity for Lola, but it’s also a land of danger where her transgender status, Judaism, and Communist sympathies can lead to serious trouble. She’s soon performing in some of Havana’s hottest clubs under an even newer name: Lola Flores. She can’t keep her past completely hidden, however; an empathetic costumer, Fernando Fallon, who’s also transgender, tells her upon their first meeting, “You are not the first woman I have met who was born what seemed a man. Or a man born a woman.” Fernando becomes Lola’s secret-keeper and adviser, and together they embark on an impressive career, finding stardom not just in nightclubs, but on the Broadway stage, on radio and records, and even in films. Her celebrity brings her into the orbit of mobsters such as Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky and to the attention of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. It turns out that America is Lola’s land of opportunity after all, especially now that she’s there on her own terms. But as Lola’s star rises, the fear that her secret will be revealed lingers in the background.

Perlstein’s prose rolls out like a reel of film, convincingly illuminating early-1930s Cuba, late ’30s New York, and ’40s Los Angeles. At one point, for instance, Lola gets support from some familiar folks following her performance in the Ziegfeld Follies: “A hand patted Lola’s behind as the final curtain descended. ‘You were aces, kid,’ said Bob Hope, who’d had a previous Broadway hit. In the wings, Fanny Brice gave Lola a knip, pinching the flesh of Lola’s left cheek between her thumb and index finger. ‘Oy! A Cuban me, only prettier!’ ” Over the course of the novel, the author manages to get plenty of mileage out of Lola’s nesting-doll identities and aliases, which she uses to achieve a variety of goals. It’s a somewhat lengthy novel at nearly 450 pages, and, at times, it feels as if Perlstein is simply moving Lola through history for little reason other than the joy of encountering real-life celebrities and various world events. The book ultimately—and unexpectedly—has more to say about the American Jewish experience than about the transgender one, which readers may find intriguing or disappointing depending on their interests. Overall, this is a work that’s not quite a picaresque but not entirely serious in tone, either, and the book gets by, much like its protagonist, on the sheer bravado of its vision.

An intriguing, if overlong, reimaging of old-time entertainment history.

Pub Date: March 30, 2022

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 356

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: June 6, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 354


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

Next book

BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL

A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 354


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).

In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.

A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.

Pub Date: June 10, 2025

ISBN: 9781250320520

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025

Next book

MY FRIENDS

A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.

An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.

Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”

A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.

Pub Date: May 6, 2025

ISBN: 9781982112820

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025

Close Quickview