An ambitious although not fully realized collection.
Across three novellas and more than 40 years, families come together and fall apart.
In the title novella, set in 1964 Nevada, Julia—a young Black woman—stops for a hitchhiker and her life is irreversibly changed. The hitchhiker’s name is Howi, and he’s a Native American man who works at a gypsum mine. They become lovers, although Julia doesn’t envision a life with him until she gets pregnant and has to give up her big-city dreams. Their lives are further complicated when their baby, Nia, is born with a disability after Julia is given thalidomide during her pregnancy. Nia’s complicated existence brings her family and friends together, but they suffer, too—when Nia dies in an accident, her parents can’t bear the pain. In “City of Angels,” Lenny Henri, a lonely Vietnam veteran suffering from PTSD with “skin something less than American Standard,” befriends Simone Bouchard, a budding artist with “skin the color of bone.” The two meet at the Los Angeles Central Library, and their friendship is primarily tethered to the shared space; when the library burns down, they both fear they won’t meet again. In “The Saints of Death Valley,” hazel-eyed Sister Francine leaves her Carmelite convent in order to adopt a red-haired baby left on the doorstep. She raises the baby, named Grace, but cannot protect her from the pressures and cruelties of real life—sex, drugs, pregnancy, abortion. Lost and seeking her path, Grace stumbles upon a bohemian family in Death Valley who takes her in, though the family struggles to maintain its center. Newman’s prose is witty, at times lyrical and haunting, although it can border on the overly precious. The plots of her novellas are quite gripping, though it’s easy to predict the downfalls, and ultimate triumphs, of their characters. Newman attempts to cover too much ground in too little space—each piece could well be its own novel—giving some of her less central characters half-lives.
An ambitious although not fully realized collection.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781953002532
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Delphinium
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
