A powerful novel—heartbreaking, magical, and real.
A young girl becomes a refugee in her own land in this fairy tale–adjacent bildungsroman.
When war comes to the small, idiosyncratic country of Elysia, no one is quite surprised, but neither are they prepared. For Sofia Bottom-Zier, the pampered young daughter of Elysian’s leading intellectual, the time between the Enemy’s invasion of their country’s borders and their inevitable march on the Capital has been a pleasurable interlude of intrigue, drama, and a renewed closeness to her difficult and mercurial mother, Clara. This comes to an end when the Enemy announces that they will allow all Elysian children safe passage out of the Capital on a special train, and Clara hastens to make sure Sofia is on it. Sofia’s safety is not Clara’s primary concern, however. Her much larger goal is to smuggle out the manuscript she has written and concealed inside Sofia’s suitcase, which she hopes will convey to the Western world that the country of Elysia is worth saving. “Of course the book is more important than you,” Clara tells her daughter. “It’s my memoir, yes. But it’s more important than me. It’s the celebration of an Elysian life. What are any of us except expendable during a war? It’s the idea of freedom that has to be saved.” With that admonition ringing in her ears, Sofia boards the Children’s Train heading toward the vague safety of “the countryside.” It soon becomes clear, however, that the Enemy has no intention of rescuing the children, and is instead shipping them to their executions. Sofia escapes, but in the commotion, she loses track of the suitcase with her mother’s manuscript inside. Accompanied by the Goose, a “public intellectual” who is also an actual goose with big dreams of a future in the Capital, Sofia sets off across the war-torn landscape of her erstwhile country in search of the Black Market—a near-mythical place where everything “illegal and forbidden and delightful ended up,” including, Sofia hopes, her mother’s manuscript, and the country’s potential salvation. The novel is told in fairy tale cadence and peppered with sophisticated animals, sensitive objects, and the enduring magic of folklore forests; its raw power lies in the way it blends the realities of war with the equally trenchant realities of its child narrator’s perspective as she navigates her suddenly irredeemable world.
A powerful novel—heartbreaking, magical, and real.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063425996
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
BOOK REVIEW
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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