A frightening novel about an unthinkable future elevated by a very sophisticated protagonist.
In Gagliastro’s dystopian novel, a young nonbinary person fights for survival when the United States is overtaken by a totalitarian government.
Before the advent of the Divided, an oppressive regime that institutes a culture of rape and mandatory sexual slavery, Dime was a smart, perceptive student. Kicked out of the house at age 16 for wearing a dress, he nonetheless got through college and even spent time in France as a translator. But the burden of student loans and low salaries took its toll, and he looked for “sugar daddies” to help financially. Dime identifies as queer and nonbinary but says he can pass for a straight, cisgender male. When the United States is hit with a piece of reactionary legislation called “the Bill,” fascism reigns, resulting in scores of deaths, mainly among LGBTQ+ people and racial minorities. Dime survives as people in this hellish reality are divided into the categories of Minors and Elders, based on age. Minors are poor and middle-class; Elders purchase Minors at auction and keep them as sexual slaves. (“When the Law allows you to do something, more people do it than you would expect.”) Dime has had seven sugar daddies in the past and is now on his third Elder. Minors are executed after serving their third Elder, putting Dime in a precarious position—but a rumor that the West Coast is still free offers a glimmer of hope. Gagliastro’s chilling novel about a nightmarish future pushes right-wing politics to terrifying extremes and tells a raw but perceptive story about the resulting victims. The viciousness of the regime is over the top, and some of the descriptions of violence and degradation are excessive. But the bulk of the novel provides first-person insights into being queer, before and after the revolution, that are razor sharp, timely, and written with a great deal of thought behind them. Dime is in an impossible situation, but he’s a dynamic, enterprising character whose perceptiveness about the world elevates the story to an impressive, convincing level.
A frightening novel about an unthinkable future elevated by a very sophisticated protagonist.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9798218254834
Page Count: 285
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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