Ambitious and powerful—a remarkable novel.
C is lonely, ill, in debt, in danger, and on the verge of the most radical reinvention of all—total erasure.
In 2008, C was an up-and-coming fabric artist in Manhattan, married and hoping for a child. Then, “on the day the market crashed,” she underwent an emergency hysterectomy and awakened to what her lifelong friend Zo, a trader on Wall Street, described as an almost literal new world, one where “everyone [is] now in debt.” Three years later, C is still struggling to adjust to the normalcies of a life in constant crisis. Her medical debt is stubbornly eating away at the resources she needs to keep her arts and crafts store afloat, her marriage has ended, she has a nagging pain in her side and experiences unpredictable fainting spells, and she’s begun to be visited by the specter of a gnomelike little man in a navy three-piece suit with a gleeful penchant for expounding on systems theory. Add to this the ongoing urgency of the Occupy Wall Street movement—in this world, a collectivist effort that has grown in the years after the financial crisis rather than petered out—and the looming threat of GoodNite, an organization of “homegrown terrorists” bent on crashing the world’s electrical grid and taking down all of society with it, and it seems no wonder that all of C’s attempts to put her life in order seem to unravel into individual twists of wasted energy and ennui. And yet, C does go on, pouring herself into an artistic gesture that refigures the hopeless tangle of economic, biological, and climate systems as a generative act that embraces the nihilism embodied by GoodNite even as it makes something never before seen out of the fabric of the denuded world. Elements of the novel (particularly its exploration of cybernetics as a ubiquitous controller of domestic life) recall the work of such 20th-century greats as DeLillo or Sebald, but Stevens’ voice—which is meticulous, wide ranging, and moored in a different perspective from the 20th century’s predominantly white male hegemonies—makes her work particularly suited for the current century’s artistic needs.
Ambitious and powerful—a remarkable novel.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781913505707
Page Count: 288
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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