A compelling—if slightly melodramatic—portrait of youth, love, and a lost era of New York.
After the death of a former friend, a Brooklyn couple finds their lives beginning to unravel.
In his second novel, author and memoirist Goodwillie paints a captivatingly vivid portrait of young love in New York in the early 2000s. Drawn by the promise of the city, Audrey and Theo are a creative couple who both escaped their respective dead-end towns and broken families. Struggling to make it in Bushwick, Audrey, a jack-of-all-trades for a well-known indie label, and Theo, a literary scout for a Hollywood production company, seem like polar opposites at first. After meeting at a concert, they fall into a deep love built on trust and devoid of secrets—or so they thought. When Audrey hears a rumor that someone from her past jumped off the Williamsburg Bridge, her life and relationship start to come apart at the seams. An old secret rises to the surface, putting Audrey and Theo in danger. The novel’s characterizations of people—from Brooklyn musicians to Upper East Siders—and the city itself are its biggest strength: “It had taken [Theo] a decade to gain his footing, but New York was funny that way. Occasionally, he thought he understood the city in a profound way. Most of the time he was confused about everything.” It’s a simple yet perfect encapsulation of the perpetual intimacy and elusiveness of Manhattan. Goodwillie’s writing is full of not only impressive detail and fondness, but also self-awareness: “Audrey and Theo were not true pioneers. They’d arrived, instead, with the first swell of settlers, and had watched with timeworn gentrifiers' dismay as the swells became waves.” Throughout the novel, the Occupy movement beats wildly in the background, and the pages are littered with current and lost locales like Café Loup, Saint Vitus and Balthazar. Aside from the plot (which sometimes falls on the overdramatic side), the novel is a panoramic time capsule of youth and self-discovery in the aughts in New York City.
A compelling—if slightly melodramatic—portrait of youth, love, and a lost era of New York.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9213-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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
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