An earnest novel about the insecurities of adolescence and the impossibility of escaping one's past.
Spanning two decades and a continent, this novel traces the consequences of rash decisions made in youth.
It's 1997 in Southern California. When 14-year-olds Meghan and Judy sneak away to find Cassie—supposedly a model—whom they’ve grown to adore in a chat room, their disappointing mothers barely notice their daughters’ absences. This parental neglect and the girls’ lack of cellphones add a note of terror to what happens next. Cassie isn’t home, but her senile great-aunt is, and she locks Meghan and Judy in Cassie’s bedroom. In alternating chapters, a third-person narrator relates the girls’ plight—to amuse themselves in captivity, they read Cassie's diary—and Cassie’s story. Cassie seems unaware that visitors were coming and has embarked on a bus journey from California to find her own disappointing mother in a Nevada commune. All of this happens in the first of the novel's three parts, which function almost as separate novellas. The second follows brothers Miles and Caleb, whose wealthy family moves from San Francisco, where 14-year-old Miles was secretly involved with a male friend, to Detroit, where much-older Caleb gets involved in the city's underground graffiti scene via a fellow skateboarder named Tez. Soon Caleb ropes Miles into the dangerous fun. This portion of the book, set in 1996, culminates in a series of events that shed unflattering light on Caleb’s character. The third portion of the book, set in 2016 New York, asks whether former sinners change. Caleb is dating Judy, who now goes by Jude. As the action opens, Jude’s mother, Bonnie, is flying east to visit her daughter and finally make amends for her alcoholism and toxic relationships, which stained Judy’s childhood. To say too much about what happens over the course of her four-day visit would spoil the book, which ties up many (though not all) dangling plot threads. There are a few too many characters for comfort: Meghan, Cassie, Miles, and Tez all get outsized attention given their secondary roles in the arc of the novel. Until Part 3, it is unclear who will matter, and it can be disappointing when beloved figures are forgotten. Still, the prose is good, the plot progresses at a satisfying clip, and the characters are endearingly flawed (except for Judy/Jude, whose only moral flaw is having a bad mother, lover, and friend). Gallagher writes meaningfully about the intergenerational impacts of addiction, abuse, and sexual violence.
An earnest novel about the insecurities of adolescence and the impossibility of escaping one's past.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-81784-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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