A novel of interior spaces that plumbs the depths of loneliness in order to find within it the origins of love.
A debut novel, translated from Norwegian, that explores love as an infinite fractal set, bound only by the dimensions that it invents.
Rakel is the only child of two devoted but unhappy parents. Her mother emigrated from Asia—leaving behind her work, her culture, and her language—in order to marry her father but has found it nearly impossible to acclimate to Norway’s racially homogenous culture. Her father dotes on Rakel but doesn’t understand the pressure she feels to keep her fearful mother safe. As Rakel grows, her propensity for logic puzzles and natural affinity for the patterns of music resolve themselves into a near virtuoso talent for conceptual mathematics. She moves to Oslo to attend the university and quickly meets Jakob Krogstad, a professor who has captured her attention through an article he wrote about the 19th-century Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya. Jakob is quick to appreciate the uniqueness of Rakel’s mind, and what begins as a mentorship slowly develops into a consuming romance. In spite of the fact that Jakob is married and has two small daughters, Rakel persuades herself that their relationship cannot be immoral because it is being undertaken in the service of true love. She agrees to wait eight years, at which point Jakob’s children will be older and they will be able to love each other openly. As time passes, Rakel’s career soars and her love for Jakob solidifies, but her health declines precipitously from an undiagnosable illness that leaves her frequently bedridden. She is forced to spend more and more time in isolation, too exhausted to live a life outside of the rich one found in her naturally inquisitive mind. The novel progresses in fragments of thought and impression. Small scenes become the gateways for passages of philosophy that stake their existential discourse about identity, space, time, and individuality on the mathematical theories that are Rakel’s solace as her autonomous life grounds to a halt in the grip of her illness. In another author’s hands, Rakel’s stasis—her physical and emotional inability to move beyond the intensity of her feelings for Jakob—might be frustrating. For Hveberg, the imbalance between Rakel’s richly evoked interior life and the lack of agency she wields in her experiences provides an opportunity to delve into the character’s vibrant intellect without diluting the reader’s sense of Rakel as a character whose joys and sorrows reflect our own.
A novel of interior spaces that plumbs the depths of loneliness in order to find within it the origins of love.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-303832-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
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
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
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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