A gritty, impressive collection of dark tales.
Troubled men and women invade each other’s spaces in Fortunato’s short story collection.
Most of the 10 stories in this volume center around interlopers who insinuate themselves into established relationships and either wreak havoc or inspire acts of vigilante justice. In the engrossing opener, “The Boot Scraper,” a married couple turn 60 and yearn for the “ability to glow with vitality once again.” A reinvigorating vacation turns deadly when the husband meets a married temptress with a horrific plan to free herself from her unhappy union. Familial strife also informs “Straight Shooter,” in which a mother, estranged from her own marriage, takes it upon herself to violently rid her troubled daughter of the ex-boyfriend who is now relentlessly stalking her. When the small-town Rhode Island reporter in “I’ve Come for the Cash” loses his job, his desperation to escape the misery of a pointless life manifests in a plot to skip town after robbing a local cafe. The narrative tips upside down and spins in a direction no reader will see coming—that’s the allure of this collection. The same holds true for the title story, which concerns a married couple who host a fond acquaintance with her sketchy boyfriend in tow for one night; the situation turns deadly after he confesses to be running from the law. His comeuppance comes swiftly, as does that of the kleptomaniac in “Everyone a Thief” who winds up embroiled in the histrionics of a group of friends, conniving her way into their unhinged antics. While the dynamic characters don’t always behave plausibly, readers won’t mind, since their actions cause twists in each story that throw preconceived notions about them to the wind. Gaslighting, deception, and cold-blooded murder pervade this book, and the result is uniformly fascinating and devilishly entertaining.
A gritty, impressive collection of dark tales.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2024
ISBN: 9798394261862
Page Count: 179
Publisher: Close to the Bone
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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
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