Stirringly emotional storytelling.
A debut collection of short stories explores the lives of ordinary people with a focus on heartache, illness, and bereavement.
Fourteen tales are offered in this volume. The opening story, “A Prayer at the Sandbar,” examines the world from the perspective of a breast cancer survivor who is confronted by the sight of topless women during a visit to the beach. This is followed by “You’re Still Here,” in which a mother whose young, adopted daughter is experiencing night terrors reflects on her life and relationships. In “Something Grand,” a neighborhood church fire finds a widow facing the prospect of holding a makeshift funeral service for her religious husband in the school gym. Meanwhile, “Gravestones” is about a Jewish woman who volunteers to help maintain a cemetery only to find a grave bearing the name of an unrequited love. And “Purge,” which deals with self-harm, introduces a woman who decides to throw out unnecessary possessions. The collection closes with “Taking Notes,” in which a wife comes across love letters from a woman prior to going on vacation with her husband. Smith builds convincing psychological worlds in which her characters wrestle with life’s tribulations. Often the challenges faced are not immediately evident. In this emotionally intuitive, if bleak, assemblage, the author creates an atmosphere of unease by deploying hazy lines such as “Water can do that to me—erase the world around me and all my connections.” Smith discloses further information with subtle skill—for instance, it becomes clear that the narrator in “A Prayer at the Sandbar” is a cancer survivor when she ponders the reactions to her “saline implants, tattooed nipples, and scars on view.” The author’s characters are human enough for readers to share their pain. When Roberta Levine in “Gravestones” considers missing out on the love of her life, her sense of mournful regret is truly palpable: “Isn’t it funny how a chance comes once? Isn’t it funny how a person could not know that? How with one silly move, one silly answer, a person’s future could be determined?” Smith’s writing may not be for everyone, as moments of levity are scarce, but this remains an expert collection by a deeply perceptive writer.
Stirringly emotional storytelling.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73617-674-0
Page Count: 167
Publisher: 7.13 Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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