A well-intentioned but didactic paean to the life of the imagination.
A middle-aged Manhattanite uses ancient art as a respite from her tumultuous personal and professional life.
The narrator of Bialosky’s latest novel tells us on the opening page: “Something terrible has happened and I don’t know what to do.” The “something” is revealed only gradually, but there are many things in the woman’s life going wrong: her son’s flailing first year at a fancy liberal arts college in Maine, the passionless marriage she endures, a career as a teacher and poet that has always seemed to hover on the brink of Major Literary Figure without ever quite getting there. The only people who ever seem to truly understand her plight are her neighbor’s daughter, an intellectual girl who turns to the narrator for mentorship, and the Visiting Poet, a man who has recently blown through the narrator’s life, leaving her reeling in the aftermath. To cope, she obsessively visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art, turning to ancient art and its myths, finding solace even in the face of unthinkable betrayals. Bialosky’s premise here—that female artists are subjected to artistic, emotional, psychological, and physical ravages that have prevented their full blooming—is admirable; one feels that Bialosky, the author of five collections of poetry as well as a memoir about poetry, among other works, is speaking at least partly for herself. But the novel goes lightly over scenes that have dramatic potential, such as the narrator’s son being assaulted at school, and pours a great deal of energy into detailed recountings of the Met’s holdings, complete with photos. The result reads more like a guidebook written by an earnest docent than the page-turning suspense novel, or even the meditative volume of lyric poems, it might have been.
A well-intentioned but didactic paean to the life of the imagination.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64009-024-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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
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