A captivating literary experiment, as well as a moving story.
In this work of fiction—an unconventional mélange of prose, poetry, and photography—an emotionally compromised librarian and an unhoused person narrate their daily lives.
In 2021, a bookish man named Maddux, who generally if uneasily responds to “Max,” works as a reference librarian in Berkeley, California, where he hears “the most remarkable, even deranged, questions.” After a harrowing LSD trip, he feels compelled to question the entirety of his existence in a fit of philosophical angst: “There was for me, now, no ultimate meaningfulness, I couldn’t understand why or even IF I existed, or if anyone really does exist….” Meanwhile, a nameless, unhoused person recounts his quotidian life with his dog, Cannella—one largely lived within the confines of an alley that abuts the library. Bern’s work flows between these narrative perspectives, reporting, by turns, from the alleyway and the reference desk. The resulting book is a dizzying brew of artistic expression that swings freely from blocks of prose to poems, interspersed with striking black-and-white photographic images by the author. The stories presented here have a fragmentary, impressionistic quality; they’re brief and sometimes hazy vignettes, woven into an uncertain tapestry of tales. The reader begins to get an intimation of the nameless narrator’s predicament—a violent home life growing up, a brother wounded in the Vietnam War and struggling with mental illness, and his own chronic drug use. With impressive subtlety, Bern draws arresting parallels between the two main characters, and both are impressive wordsmiths. However, Max, while sympathetic, simply can’t understand why unhoused people might not accept help from others. This is an unusual book that’s often exasperating to follow, and readers with little tolerance for stubborn uncertainty will be frustrated. However, for those who can navigate such slippery literary ground, this is a compelling hybrid of artistic forms.
A captivating literary experiment, as well as a moving story.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9798986724379
Page Count: 119
Publisher: UnCollected Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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