A complex tale about motherhood and witchcraft with an exasperating protagonist.
Three generations of witches summon their powers from tarot cards or, in some cases, cookies.
With just five days to go before Halloween, Flair Hardwicke couldn't feel less enthusiastic about the holiday spirit oozing out of every inhabitant of Rattleboro, Kansas. If anything, Flair is counting the days until Nov. 1, the "least-witchy day of the year" and the day when her magical heritage would remain blissfully hidden. Like her mother and grandmother before her, Flair has the ability to perform magic by reading a particular deck of tarot cards. Hand-painted by a Hardwicke ancestor and "fused with all the magic of generations of witches," these cards answer only to Flair. She hasn't seen the deck in almost 30 years, not since she stole them and hid them from her tarot-obsessed mother and gave up magic for good. But since her grandmother Marie's recent passing, Flair and her 13-year-old daughter, Lucie, have returned to Rattleboro in hopes of a new beginning, one without her cheating ex, David. Lucie would rather be anywhere than her mother's hometown, but to Flair, Rattleboro looks just the way she left it, although she can't help but notice a strange undercurrent running through town. One night, she unconsciously bakes a batch of Hardwicke tarot card cookies, and Rattleboro's Halloween festival director Renee Oakes can't seem to stop giving her threatening stares. Renee's mother, Loretta, might even know the Hardwicke family secret, though her son (and Flair's high school fling), Jude, appears none the wiser. Just when these spooky happenings begin to feel more sinister, Flair's mother, Cynthia, turns up with a bewitched David in tow...and the stash of hidden cards. Dell'Antonia's third novel is full of mysterious and eerie plot twists, and most chapters end with a low-stakes cliffhanger. However, Flair's unwillingness to listen to anyone creates too many frustrating moments of miscommunication and situations that could have been avoided, and Renee's constant irritation with her might echo the reader's own sentiments.
A complex tale about motherhood and witchcraft with an exasperating protagonist.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780593713792
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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