Moments of striking prose, sudden humor, and sharp analysis of social groups shine in this uneven collection.
A debut collection of imaginative, dark, and haunting stories tied loosely to themes of community, violence, and belonging.
These 10 magnetic stories range from otherworldly to intimate, dealing with a trio of depressive radio hosts, a kooky relative hoarding miniature dolls, and a group of women forced to marry enemy soldiers. Many stories take clear inspiration from the real world, such as in “Decency Rule,” when a power-hungry politician uses vulgarity and clownish humor to improve the lives of “people who were exactly like him.” But these stories spin familiar premises toward the absurd and comic. In “Such Great Height and Consequence,” a town reckons with the removal of a Confederate monument. Shenanigans ensue when the empty platform becomes a space for citizens to stand, sunbathe, practice violin, and spill secrets. Many of Norris’ stories find moments of stunning beauty in bleak and grizzly events. In “Certain Truths and Miracles,” a boy swallows mouthfuls of twinkling, poisonous plankton that will eventually kill him, but for a moment transform him into “a shimmering conduit of the sea’s bright light.” Often narrated by an omniscient “we” and usually featuring a cast of characters rather than an individual narrator, these stories build a lush sense of place through a chorus of voices. While Norris’ lyric prose often creates a thorough and detailed environment, several stories fizzle out, missing the propulsion of a narrative arc, character development, or plot movement. They occasionally struggle to build momentum beyond elegiac and clever descriptions.
Moments of striking prose, sudden humor, and sharp analysis of social groups shine in this uneven collection.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016312
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An engaging, eloquent message for this fragile planet.
A story of friendship, technology, oceans, and a small island.
Powers juggled nine lead characters in The Overstory (2018), his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Here he wrangles just four, but the result is almost as complicated. Two nerdish boys, Rafi Young and Todd Keane, bond in high school over chess and Go. In college, Rafi falls in love with Ina Aroita, a Hawaii-born Navy brat whose mother is Tahitian. The men fall out shortly after brainstorming over Todd’s idea for a computer game called Playground. This strand of the novel is told in retrospect by Todd at age 57, addressing an unidentified “you,” after he receives a diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies; he’s an unreliable narrator in more than one way. Interspersed are scenes in later years on the French Polynesian island of Makatea, scarred by phosphate mining and down to a population of 82, including Rafi and Ina and the novel’s fourth lead, an elderly Canadian scuba diver named Evelyne Beaulieu. Her lifelong love of the diversity and preciousness of aquatic life provides the book’s other narrative strand and its environmental theme. Through Todd, Powers sketches the computer and social media revolutions, from early coding to gaming to AI. The counterpoint to this high-tech history is Makatea, a paradise lost to industrial mining that decades later must decide whether to accept a consortium’s lucrative proposal to use the island to build floating autonomous cities. This is a challenging novel, fragmented but compelling, with fine writing on friendship and its loss and on the awe and delight the ocean inspires. Along with its environmental warnings, the book carries an intriguing look at the ways people and animals play, as in the boys’ competitive chess, the antics of manta rays, the allure of computer games, and what a meta-minded author might do with his readers.
An engaging, eloquent message for this fragile planet.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781324086031
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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