Eight heartening reminders that there are few connections impossible to forge or mend.
Crotty’s second collection shares the everyday struggles and joys of women and girls peppered through Middle America.
There are no spectacles in these stories, and they are all the better for it. The characters, many of them queer, are familiar, well meaning, and flawed. The conflicts they face range from universal to less common, including first heartbreak, rocky transitions into adulthood, losing an infant, and surviving sexual assault. "Halloween" centers on high school senior Jules and her whirlwind romance, amid crushed toppings and sticky counters, with frozen yogurt–shop co-worker Erika, a college student. Advised by her kooky grandma Jan, Jules learns that while the most thrilling connections are not always the healthiest, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stick around to see what happens. The title story features 73-year-old Betsy, a volunteer for an organization that provides support to survivors in the aftermath of rape, and 23-year-old survivor Lenna. Though Betsy does not identify as a “do-gooder kind of person” and only began volunteering after her therapist suggested it would help her cope with estrangement from her only child, her compassionate presence lays the groundwork for connection between two lonely people. In "Dear Matt,” Caroline, newly graduated from law school and recovering from a breakup, implores her new brother-in-law to help her sister, Ella, forgive her after an explosive fight triggered by the clashes between Matt and (now) Ella’s Mormon beliefs and Caroline’s sexuality. While this story isn't as tight as some of the others, the letter format adds some nice variety to the collection, and the line “I realized this was her real and actual life, the one she wanted and meant to keep” is a gratifying distillation of a theme that runs through the book. Crotty repeatedly signals that it is not just all right, but good, to realize your perception of someone is fundamentally misaligned with their perception of themself; her characters make confident assumptions, feel surprised, back up, and reacquaint themselves with one another, becoming wiser and more tolerant with each misjudgment and readjustment.
Eight heartening reminders that there are few connections impossible to forge or mend.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781637681008
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Autumn House Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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