A sparkling re-creation of Britain’s literary and political avant-garde.
Love blossoms and repartee flows for playwright George Bernard Shaw and his coterie of late-Victorian literati and socialists in this blithe historical novel.
Hall’s yarn fictionalizes the relationships of three notable real-life couples at the center of British intellectual life in the 1890s. One is the attraction of Shaw, a self-proclaimed “writing machine” who insists that his work is too important to permit any commitment to a woman, to Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a down-to-earth heiress who puts up with Shaw’s vanity but proves adept at puncturing it: “You regard yourself as a fountain of genius indifferently showering anyone who comes near,” she tells him. “That makes you a splendid natural wonder, but a decidedly poor friend.” Another is the initially unrequited passion of Sidney Webb, Shaw’s colleague at the socialist Fabian Society, for socialist reformer Beatrice Potter; the two are obvious soul mates, but Potter lacks romantic interest in Webb because of his unappealing looks. And there’s the psychodrama of playwright and legendary phrasemaker Oscar Wilde and his grasping boyfriend, Lord Alfred Douglas, which later leads to Wilde’s ruin. The characters float through London’s restaurants, theaters, salons, and lecture halls and then spend much of the book at the Fabians’ summer cottage in the country; there, they suffer the inedible vegetarian diet that Shaw imposes on everyone and engage in sophisticated conversation about politics, morality, and affairs of the heart. Hall’s novel unfolds through diaries and letters, but it has a polished, theatrical air that’s redolent of Shaw’s and Wilde’s comedies; his version of Shaw has an acerbic egotism worthy of Pygmalion’s Henry Higgins, while Wilde is an inexhaustible source of witticism that hides depths of reflection beneath a surface of frivolous irony: “I adore morality,” he asserts. “It gives my sins their significance.” The other characters also get their due as they go about the work of steady, gradual remediation of society’s ills, and, along the way, they quietly steal the show from the brilliant talkers. The result is an engrossing period piece with gorgeous wordplay and a touch of serious thinking to boot.
A sparkling re-creation of Britain’s literary and political avant-garde.Pub Date: July 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-09-837073-2
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Inky Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.
A collegiate diver and swimmer secretly pursue kink together, and risk falling in love along the way.
Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling. Despite a successful recovery from the injury that almost ended her Stanford diving career, she hasn’t been able to get her head together, and it’s affecting her performance. Plus, she’s trying to stay focused on getting into medical school. A relationship would be out of the question. By comparison, Lukas Blomqvist is a swimming idol, a record-breaker who wins medals as easily as breathing, and Scarlett has long been convinced he would never look in her direction—until one fateful night when a mutual friend lets slip that they have something unexpected in common: Scarlett likes to be submissive in the bedroom, while Lukas prefers to take a dominant approach. Now, they both know a big secret about each other, and it’s something neither of them can stop thinking about. It’s Lukas who suggests they have a fling—purely physical, just to take the edge off, so Scarlett can get out of her own head and stop overthinking her dives. Initially, their arrangement is easy to stick to, but the more time they spend together, the more Scarlett starts to realize that what she feels for Lukas is more than physical attraction. Complicating the situation is the fact that Scarlett’s friend Penelope Ross used to go out with Lukas, and the longer Scarlett keeps mum about her true feelings for him, the more difficult it is to keep the situation hidden from another person she really cares about. While Scarlett and Lukas’ relationship does begin as a physical one, their deeper psychological connection takes a little too long to emerge amid all the other storylines, resulting in a somewhat rushed resolution. However, Hazelwood’s latest is proof of the depth and maturity that has emerged in her writing over the years, and it highlights her embrace of sexier, more emotional elements than were present in her original STEMinist rom-coms.
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593641057
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.
Two people with bad luck in relationships find each other through a popular Reddit thread.
Emma Grant and her best friend, Maddy, are travel nurses, working at hospitals for three-month stints while they see the country. Just a few weeks before they’re set to move to Hawaii, Emma reads a popular “Am I the Asshole” Reddit thread from a Minnesota man who thinks he’s cursed—women he dates find their soulmates after breaking up with him, and the latest one found true love with his best friend! Emma has had a similar experience, which inspires her to DM the man and commiserate. She’s delighted by her witty, lively interactions with software engineer Justin Dahl, and is intrigued when he suggests that if they date each other, maybe they’ll each find their soulmate afterward. Emma upends the Hawaii plan and convinces Maddy to move to Minneapolis for the summer so she can meet Justin in person. The overly complex setup brings Emma and Justin together and the two hit it off, with Justin immediately falling head over heels for Emma. Jimenez then pivots to creating romantic roadblocks and melodramatic subplots centering on each character’s family of origin. Justin’s mother is about to serve six years in prison for embezzlement, which means Justin must move back home to care for his three much younger siblings. Emma was traumatized by her own mother for much of her childhood, left to fend for herself and eventually abandoned in the foster system. When her mother shows up in Minnesota, Emma must face her traumatic childhood and admit that she has prioritized her mother’s well-being over her own. There is little time devoted to Emma’s painful efforts to heal herself enough to accept Justin’s love, which leaves the novel feeling unsatisfying.
A wallowing, emotionally wrenching family drama that leaves little time for romance.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781538704431
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forever
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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