Ostlund proves herself a master of the form.
These nine startling stories capture the subtleties of feeling—and being made to feel—out of place.
The protagonists blend into one another—most are queer women living in New Mexico and/or connected to Minnesota by a strained cord—but the situations they find themselves in are distinct. In “The Bus Driver,” a college student visits her austere hometown and runs into her childhood best friend, a young, hardened mother working in a chicken factory and longing to return to the adolescent trauma which set her down this path. “Clear as Cake” places us in a creative writing class led by Marvin Helgarson (always invoked by his full name) and populated by offbeat, hostile students. The narrator is struck by things “left over from an earlier life,” and how alien, even ridiculous, they can feel in this one. “The Stalker” exemplifies the current of hazard that runs through the collection, particularly for women and queer people: An adjunct professor begins to feel cornered by a student who insists on behaving inappropriately, in and out of class. The final story is “Just Another Family,” a novella featured in The Best American Short Stories 2024 and the standout of the collection. The protagonist, Sybil, returns home after her father dies to be greeted by her dysfunctional Midwestern family, a childhood bedroom full of rifles, and a urine-stained mattress. “My father spent the last year of his life discontinent,” Sybil narrates. “He’d always had trouble with prefixes.” As the aftermath of the death unfolds (and her mother’s mind unravels), Sybil struggles between the life her upbringing laid out for her and the life she’s made for herself. The disgust and fear these characters feel when confronted with unsettling moments or direct threats to their wellbeing is leavened by world-weary humor, materializing as the author lays bare the absurdity of everyday interactions. These stories are not comfortable worlds to inhabit, but they are precise and endlessly fascinating ones.
Ostlund proves herself a master of the form.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781662603020
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Astra House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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