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FREEWAY

LA MOVIE

Satirical, absurdist fun.

The construction of a freeway in Cuba prompts a host of madcap antics in this surrealistic novel in stories.

A new road is under construction; this novel’s narrator is observing it; his companion, nicknamed El Autista, is along for the ride, purportedly to make a documentary about it. Within that straightforward structure, though, things get very weird in Lage’s first work translated into English. The narrator performs an emergency heart transplant. Transformers-like robots are built out of hurricanes. A talking car arrives on the scene; so does an army of skateboarding girls. The truth behind the marketing disaster of New Coke is revealed. A taco shop becomes a sex shop. The infant on the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind, now grown-up, has a cameo; so does eccentric chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer. But though none of this holds together conventionally, Lage is working a consistent theme: things falling apart despite outsize civilizational efforts to keep them together. To that end, there’s probably an allegory to find here about the fate of Cuba in the wake of the Castro era. But the surface-level pleasures are worth experiencing in themselves; Lage’s storytelling is a canny mix of the dystopian, identity-scrambling, futuristic tales of Philip K. Dick (who’s explicitly name-checked) and the queasy themes of Dennis Cooper (not name-checked, but the occasional mentions of necrophilia and flayed skin fit the bill). Toward the end, Lage suggests some of the elements of his literary mission, including “Blurred Genres,” “Animal/Human/Machine Ambiguity,” and “Surrealist Space-Time.” That may not make the point of the story any clearer, but readers comfortable with mashups of SF, myth, post-colonial literature, and horror will find this a provocative and bemusing yarn.

Satirical, absurdist fun.

Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-64605-182-3

Page Count: 180

Publisher: Deep Vellum

Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022

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DON'T LET HIM IN

Jewell is absolutely a genius at building suspense, but the “man behaving badly” plot is getting tired.

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Following her father’s sudden death, Aisling Swann is secretly horrified when her mother begins to date again—and she quickly becomes suspicious of this new flame.

Four years ago: A mysterious male narrator reflects upon his relationship with his wife—along with a few pointed comments about how she is aging. It quickly becomes apparent that this self-proclaimed “very pleasant” man is not who he seems; he already has a girlfriend on the side, and he’s playing both women with sob stories about his job and his traumatic past while taking money from them. Even as they get more and more frustrated with his lack of communication during ever-lengthening absences, he still gives them what they want: “a top-notch husband.” In the present day, Ash Swann; her brother, Arlo; and their mother, Nina, mourn the loss of her charismatic father, Paddy, a successful chef with a chain of lucrative restaurants. Nina receives a sympathy note from a man who claims to have worked closely with Paddy in the industry, which leads to a robust online flirtation that moves into the real world about a year after her husband’s death. Ash is living at home, mired in grief as well as her own mental health struggles, and she’s none too happy to see her mom dating—but particularly this handsome, egregiously suave Nick Radcliffe. Ash begins to notice some inconsistencies with his stories and his past, so she enlists Paddy’s ex-girlfriend Jane to help her investigate. Meanwhile, Ash’s story continues to intercut that of the mysterious man who is now married to his former girlfriend—and still up to his old tricks. Jewell’s cutting between past and present certainly allows revelations to ooze out at a slow, controlled pace; even as the reader makes obvious connections, the full picture remains obscure. Jewell has written some incredibly engaging and strong female characters, Nina, Ash, and Jane foremost among them. What would it have been like to split the narrative between them instead of giving so much voice—and thus narrative power—to the male antagonist?

Jewell is absolutely a genius at building suspense, but the “man behaving badly” plot is getting tired.

Pub Date: June 24, 2025

ISBN: 9781668033876

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

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