A moving and graceful novella of overcoming sorrow.
A year in the life of a woman grieving for her stepfather.
The narrator of this beautiful book is a 27-year-old woman named April, a curatorial assistant in California. The story starts in the spring, in the days after April’s beloved stepfather, Wilson, has died. This is the second of her fathers to have died: The first killed himself when she was 16. In the months of April’s mourning, she floats along, almost dissociative. She has short relationships with unsuitable men: Crash Man, who would always fall asleep while driving; Leaf Man, who grows marijuana plants in his spare bedroom closet; Math Man, who is a foot and a half taller than she is; Critic Man, who hates the layout of her apartment. Finally, in the fall, April falls for her best friend’s husband’s cousin, Victor, who himself suffers from depression—“the serious kind”—and her life begins to take shape once more. Vogel (At the Border of Wilshire & Nobody, 2015) captures with acute accuracy the drifting sadness that lingers in the months after the death of a loved one—the way little moments serve as reminders and how every task feels just a little bit more difficult. The novella is broken up by season and then into brief chapters, as if to mirror the disjointed, distracted experience of trying to live after the people you love are dead. The prose is stunning: never overwrought for so intense a subject, flowing yet specific, quiet and lovely. In reference to the lists April makes to keep her life on track, she writes: “Life doesn’t rest, though. It’s always slipping into the future, right when I was all caught up. It’s always bringing me back into the thick of it, and I don’t want to be in the thick of it. I want everything done.”
A moving and graceful novella of overcoming sorrow.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61219-736-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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