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PLEASE READ THIS LEAFLET CAREFULLY

Name: PLEASE READ THIS LEAFLET CAREFULLY
Author: Karen Havelin
ISBN: 978-1-948-34005-2

by Karen Havelin ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 2019

A brave and bold novel about radical self-acceptance and living in the face of trauma.

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Chronic pain takes center stage in this funny, moving meditation on coming to terms with your body's limitations.

Norwegian transplant Laura must find her way in New York City as a newly single mother with an unpredictable and vulnerable body. "For years, I've considered it an established fact that the female body is a pain in the ass," she deadpans in the novel's opening line. "The male body seems like a sunny campsite in comparison." In her mid-20s, Laura was diagnosed with endometriosis, a painful condition that left many of her internal organs scarred and fused together despite numerous treatments and corrective surgeries. Now, at 36, she must also navigate a recent divorce, single parenthood, and dating women and men in a body that won't always cooperate. When Kjetil, the loving Norwegian ex Laura abandoned to move to the U.S. and pursue a writing degree, suddenly immigrates to the city, Laura is yet again confronted with the particular pains of her past. Havelin's debut moves backward in time, from the chaos of contemporary New York to the thrill of coming-of-age in a body that still feels full of promise. As a young girl in Norway, Laura struggled with chronic stomach pain and severe allergies that derailed her interest in figure skating, alienated her from her parents and friends, and eventually disrupted her ability to work, love, and feel productive. "It's crystal clear to me that no one wants to hear about it," thinks Laura, "but I will never finish needing to tell how much it hurt, how much it hurts, how bad it is." It's unusual to encounter such open and bold writing about pain as well as the attendant fear, resentment, and stress that burden someone who needs care and treatment. Havelin's novel is unsparing in this regard, showing how deeply Laura struggles with the psychological burdens of having a body with a mind of its own and how hard she works to get free. She's a caustic, wry, and tender heroine who will make you root for her even in her darkest moments.

A brave and bold novel about radical self-acceptance and living in the face of trauma.

Pub Date: May 7, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-948-34005-2

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Dottir Press

Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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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

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.