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
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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