Thoughtful tales that draw readers gently into a more accepting world, leaving a wake of wonder.
The character of a small Tidewater locale in Virginia gradually emerges though the voices of its female residents in Hughes’ short story collection.
The little town of Mobjack sits on the edge of the continent in the Tidewater region of Virginia—the former home of Pocahontas and the current home of a stray Confederate monument, an unlikely prehistoric find, and at least one serial sexual harasser. The people that readers meet in these 10 marvelous stories seem to exist at the edges of their own lives, struggling to get back to more solid ground. The main characters, who are mostly women, tell their tales in first- and third-person narratives. In “Fig-Girl,” a young woman answers a widow’s advertisement for a boarder and shows up in the clothes of the widow’s dead husband. In “Diablo,” named after a foulmouthed parrot, a woman makes a major life decision after removing graffiti from the storefront of a gay couple’s hair salon; meanwhile, the aforementioned Confederate statue is removed from the village green. One is hesitant to offer too much summary of “The Kittiwake,” but here’s a sentence, in which a woman looks around a boat on which her partner has recently died, that simply illustrates how sudden absence changes one’s perceptions: “Jackie’s belongings—her captain’s log, her waders hanging on a hook, her bird-watching binoculars, her Christmas cactus—all seemed flat, like brushstrokes on canvas.” Some American short stories have a quality in which it seems that nearly any sentence would make a great first line, as so it is with these. The pacing is quick but supple, with enough undertow in the details that by the time readers are a few paragraphs deep, they’ll already feel dynamics that roil the waters and pull them in further.
Thoughtful tales that draw readers gently into a more accepting world, leaving a wake of wonder.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 121
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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