The king of campology is back, as gleefully heinous as ever.
A grifter couple rampages up the Eastern Seaboard, their relatives and genitals in tow.
Marsha Sprinkle and Daryl, her ex-husband/chauffeur, have been living high on the hog in a foreclosed McMansion, making regular raids on the Baltimore/Washington International Airport baggage claim to keep themselves in clothing, cash, and fake IDs. Tension between the couple is running high—it's the one day a year that Marsha permits sexual intercourse, and Daryl and his little friend, Richard (his penis has a life, a voice, and dreams of its own), are ready to collect. Marsha, however, has absolutely no intention of honoring her agreement, so when a heist at the airport goes awry, she gives Daryl and Richard the slip and goes on the lam by herself. Fleeing up the East Coast, she's trailed not only by her ex and his penis, but by her estranged 22-year-old daughter, Poppy, and Poppy's cabal of bouncing friends—Leepa, Vaulta, and other "leaders in the radical trampoline movement"—as well as her also-estranged mother, Adora. New York–based Adora is worshipped on the Upper East Side for her plastic surgery on dogs. Her own cocker spaniel, Surprize, has been made over to look like Joan Rivers ("Adora has spent years sculpting, tucking, pulling, and lasering her dog’s skin into that 'wind tunnel' look that Joan made her signature") but is now transitioning to become a cat. All of this gives Waters plenty of opportunity for woke jokes; Amtrak, bus, and airport jokes; and, of course, poop jokes. If you are a Waters fan, you have long since made your peace with the latter. Good thing, because the whole crew of Marsha haters is headed to Provincetown for the annual Anilingus Festival. Billed as Waters' debut novel, this road story is a cousin of the stories included in his hitchhiking memoir, Carsick (2015).
The king of campology is back, as gleefully heinous as ever.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-374-18572-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
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
SEEN & HEARD
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
