A sometimes wearying but boldly rewarding work of metafiction.
After a huge swath of downtown Chicago is swallowed up by a freakish sinkhole, an acclaimed Jewish novelist who had a brief run as a stand-up comic and an obsessive fan who becomes a mayoral aide confront their losses.
The novelist, Solomon Gladman, lost his entire family to the “terrestrial anomaly" (as city officials insist it be called), leaving him to obsess over the intensely neurotic behavior of his parrot, Gogol. Having become a clinical social worker, he is attuned to that task. The fan is Apter Schutz, who by the age of 21 made millions marketing a subversive desk calendar aimed at "real Americans," followed his hero into psychotherapy, and then went to work for a hapless mayor determined to build Mount Chicago, a memorial to the disaster victims that is "as moving as Auschwitz" but "less depressing." At the core of the novel—which, at almost 600 pages, is a walk in the park compared to Levin's 1,000-page opus, The Instructions (2010)—is an epic discussion of the meaning of survival that culminates in the soft, made-for-2022 notion that anyone who is even aware of a death "survives" it. Seemingly by design, the novel tests the reader's patience with long streams of obsessive musings on subjects ranging from pizza preferences to the films of Steven Spielberg (whom David Mamet, one of the real-life figures in the book, calls a "pretentious schlockmeister"). In his opening disclaimer, Levin says that " 'ideas' get in the way of art," but his art is all about how affirming it can be, during these times of Covid-narrowed lives, to dose on ideas. "I digress, therefore I'm alive" might be his theme—a deeply affecting one when all is said and redone.
A sometimes wearying but boldly rewarding work of metafiction.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54824-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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