A novel that may make you think again about what lies beneath the surface of your own community.
A compulsively readable book about how easily tightknit communities can unravel.
Thornton’s debut novel opens with the death of 20-something Gentry from a heroin overdose and traces the reverberations of that event through the small North Carolina town of Bethany. Nettie, Gentry’s mother, watches her marriage fail and the town abandon her as though she’s to blame for her son’s drug addiction. Ethan, who discovered his brother’s lifeless body, descends into the basement and doesn’t come out. Dale, who distanced himself from Gentry when he entered the police academy, is haunted by his former best friend’s voice as mental illness takes over his life. At the same time, the town elders continue their tradition of gathering every morning at the ironically named Table of Knowledge at Austin’s Grill, unwilling to face what’s happening under their noses. Thornton takes an unflinching look at mental illness, sexual abuse, domestic violence, small-town conservatism, and the empty promises of community. The novel’s alternating points of view allow her to effectively inhabit different characters. The chapter detailing Dale’s psychotic breakdown is masterful: Dale distracts himself from his pain by scribbling down facts about executions: “black mask protected dignity of victim—also to keep eyeballs from falling out.” Another standout is the chapter from 8-year-old Emma Hatcher’s perspective, which captures in heartbreaking detail how easily children internalize abuse. Just a third grader, Emma watches her father brutalize her mother and then tries to protect herself by pretending she’s not affected: “My body can get scared of a thing even when my brain isn’t scared of it at all and that is what I hate most about myself.” The novel’s only flaw is that some of the characters’ happy endings do a disservice to the depths of their suffering.
A novel that may make you think again about what lies beneath the surface of your own community.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63246-117-9
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Ig Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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
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