Slithers gleefully around hot-button issues such as gender politics and racism without a whiff of didacticism.
A darkly comic contemporary fairy tale about estranged sisters who happen to have been born snakes.
The story riffs on the ancient Chinese “Legend of the White Snake,” in which a krait and a viper made a pact to be sisters forever. The krait yearned to become human, so the viper, though happy in her skin, agreed to transform too. For 800 years they practiced Taoist “self-cultivation” until they became immortal human women named Su and Emerald. “Self-cultivation? How Goop of you,” Emerald’s 21st-century best friend quips, capturing the book’s prevailing tone of satiric, campy waggishness. In the present day, Emerald ekes out a sketchy bohemian existence in Brooklyn financed by men she meets on a sugar daddy app. A millionaire for 200 years, Su lives in Singapore, married to an ambitious official in the city-state’s government. Vivid physical and sociological descriptions bring both cities to realistic as well as symbolic life. Unruly New York represents Emerald’s embrace of individualism and impetuous spontaneity, while buttoned-down Singapore parallels the value Su places on assimilation and safety. Fully realized as complicated women, the sisters share a protective love/hate relationship all female siblings will recognize. But these sisters are also snakes, and evidently green vipers are impulsive but less deadly than white kraits, which bite infrequently but are “ruthless” with more poisonous venom. The sisters’ diametrically opposed approaches to being human become clear during Su’s lethal trip to New York, followed by Emerald’s disastrous visit to Singapore. The obvious dichotomy between their views and values, coupled with reptilian amorality, set off a series of events ranging from graphically violent and deeply tragic to romantically bittersweet and deliberately, eloquently silly.
Slithers gleefully around hot-button issues such as gender politics and racism without a whiff of didacticism.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780063355064
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
BOOK REVIEW
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.
A British widow travels to Ibiza and learns that it’s never too late to have a happy life.
In a world that seems to be getting more unstable by the moment, Haig’s novels are a steady ship in rough seas, offering a much-needed positive message. In works like the bestselling The Midnight Library (2020), he reminds us that finding out what you truly love and where you belong in the universe are the foundations of building a better existence. His latest book continues this upbeat messaging, albeit in a somewhat repetitive and facile way. Retired British schoolteacher Grace Winters discovers that an old acquaintance has died and left her a ramshackle home in Ibiza. A widow who lost her only child years earlier, Grace is at first reluctant to visit the house, because, at 72, she more or less believes her chance for happiness is over—but when she rouses herself to travel to the island, she discovers the opposite is true. A mystery surrounds her friend’s death involving a roguish islander, his activist daughter, an internationally famous DJ, and a strange glow in the sea that acts as a powerful life force and upends Grace’s ideas of how the cosmos works. Framed as a response to a former student’s email, the narrative follows Grace’s journey from skeptic (she was a math teacher, after all) to believer in the possibility of magic as she learns to move on from the past. Her transformation is the book’s main conflict, aside from a protest against an evil developer intent on destroying Ibiza’s natural beauty. The outcome is never in doubt, and though the story often feels stretched to the limit—this novel could have easily been a novella—the author’s insistence on the power of connection to change lives comes through loud and clear.
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593489277
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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