A ghost story buried in a family closet laden with skeletons and sins.
Two women, a grandmother and her granddaughter, grapple with their legacy in a house forged from hate.
The troubling fact that all houses are haunted isn’t lost on Spanish author Martínez, who infuses the bewitched homestead in her little nightmare with saints and angels to balance out its familial terrors. “We have a lot of traditions, including locking each other away,” confesses the unnamed granddaughter, who co-narrates the story in alternating chapters with her equally anonymous grandmother. Set against the backdrop of La Mancha—a region that bore the brunt of the country’s civil war—the story unfolds in a very old house where the girl still dreams of escape to university in Madrid, or any kind of better life really, but her elder knows better: “It’s a trap. Nobody ever leaves it, and those who do always end up coming back.” We soon learn that the grandmother’s own mother buried her abusive husband alive within the walls of the house, which seems to have awakened a hunger in it. Crippled by poverty, the narrators are also burdened by their parasitic relationship with the Jarabos, a wealthy family that suffers under the curses the grandmother and her saints unfurl upon them, and that waits, if subconsciously, for their comeuppance. The grandmother’s marriage to the Jarabos’ foreman, Pedro, ended with his mysterious demise, and the granddaughter’s employment under their roof only deepens the familial rift. If the book’s stubborn employment of unnamed characters seems confusing, it is. Martínez’s prose is fairly straightforward with a menacing snarl hiding amid all this subtext, but it often leaves one guessing as to what’s happening at all. There are interesting dynamics simmering underneath, not least the palpable sense of inherited trauma and the oppressive nature of inequality. However, the book’s metaphysical ambitions are compromised by structural flaws that threaten to leave readers adrift, if alarmed.
A ghost story buried in a family closet laden with skeletons and sins.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781949641592
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
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