A rumination on modern happiness that rewards patient readers in the end.
A woman in tech grapples with doubts about her profession, relationship, and family while working on a project that aims to quantify happiness.
Evelyn Kominsky Kumamoto is 31 when she takes a leave of absence from her philosophy Ph.D. program to work at “the third-most-popular internet company,” where she and two co-workers are asked to develop a prototype for the self-assessment of happiness. From Evelyn’s perspective, everyone around her is better than her at being happy, from her loving boyfriend, Jamie, to her trend-forecasting college best friend, Sharky, to her father, who has his first serious girlfriend since Evelyn’s mother died almost 20 years ago. Evelyn’s mother was White and Jewish, and her father is Japanese, as is Kumiko, his girlfriend, and Evelyn’s biracial identity informs her thoughts and interactions throughout the novel. Evelyn is dogged by ambivalence in every aspect of her life, and her uncertainty raises doubts in her new boss, Dr. Luce, who unfailingly believes in the happiness project. Her vacillations come to a head when Jamie asks her to marry him—she responds, “I don’t know.” While Evelyn is considering Jamie’s proposal, she gets pregnant and, after much thought, decides to keep the baby. Punctuating these events are questions from JOYFULL, the happiness-monitoring app that Evelyn’s team helped create. The app’s questions are suspiciously specific, creating a Greek chorus–like effect that prompts Evelyn to reflect on her relationship with her parents, her career, and what it means, or would mean, for her to be happy. Evelyn’s constant ambivalence about every aspect of her life is frustrating, and she can feel like a muted and flat protagonist. She possesses an acute awareness of racial dynamics, though, and the myriad ways her biracial identity causes friction throughout the novel provide moments of wit and insight. An emotional twist in the later chapters ups the stakes and gives the reader a reason to stay engaged.
A rumination on modern happiness that rewards patient readers in the end.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-59-329826-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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