A blood-soaked tale of sex, love, and ennui that would make Anne Rice proud.
A vampire who has seen the rise and fall of civilizations and a young woman struggling to cope with her mother’s terminal illness become unlikely companions in the city of Buenos Aires.
In Yuszczuk’s novel—her first to be published in the U.S.—the streets of Buenos Aires run red with blood. Told in two parts that span the course of several centuries, the story begins with a nameless vampire recounting the exceedingly violent events of her long and lonely life. After witnessing the brutal deaths of her Maker and her sisters at the hands of enraged villagers—in a scene that is delightfully reminiscent of old black-and-white monster movies—she flees Europe for the distant coast of Argentina. Soon to be ravaged by the arrival of yellow fever, Buenos Aires provides her with an endless supply of fresh blood and the anonymity and discretion that she so greatly desires. As time passes, though, the city proves itself to be equally unsafe for a creature of the night. In the wake of betrayal and tragedy brought on by her nature, and after meeting a young cemetery groundskeeper who is entranced by both her beauty and her monstrosity, she locks herself inside a coffin in an abandoned tomb to live out a solitary and thirsty eternity. The story picks up years later in a modern Buenos Aires with a young woman who is struggling to help care for her ailing mother as well as with her own motherhood. As she traverses the city, telling readers about her life with an alarmingly robotic sense of remove, she comes into possession of a mysterious key that has been passed down through her family and which eventually leads her to the vampire’s tomb. Sex and violence take center stage in this gothic tale as the horrors that Buenos Aires and Yuszczuk’s characters face continue to slowly unfurl. The novel takes its time, building gradually to the electric moment when the two women finally meet, but it struggles with pacing and tends to tell readers about its world rather than show them. What truly shines are the author’s knowledge of vampire lore and her dedication to creating a monster who could easily join the ranks of Dracula and Nosferatu.
A blood-soaked tale of sex, love, and ennui that would make Anne Rice proud.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593472064
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 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
An action-packed, brightly detailed historical novel not much hampered by its thinly characterized central figure.
A free-spirited woman forges a career as a writer and journalist, risking scandal and war zones to follow her heart.
Allende’s latest opens in San Francisco in 1873, introducing Emilia at age 7, the illegitimate daughter of Molly Walsh, who, as a novice nun, was seduced and abandoned by wealthy Chilean Gonzalo Andrés del Valle. Molly goes on to a successful marriage, Emilia grows up with a loving stepfather, and at 17 she begins writing, then publishing, sensational dime novels under the pseudonym Brandon J. Price. By 23, she’s a journalist with a column in The Daily Examiner, though still forced to hide her gender behind her pen name. Rule breaking is in her nature, and while she accepts, for now, lower pay than men, she decides on a trip to New York to take a lover and learns to control her own contraception. Later, finally writing under her own name, she’s commissioned to go to Chile and cover its civil war from a human angle, accompanied by colleague and friend Eric Whelan, whose focus is the military aspect. Chilean revolutionary politics make for less sprightly reading, but Emilia’s individual encounters with members of high and low society lend atmosphere. These include the president, a great aunt, and eventually her father—now alone, regretful, and mortally ill. Although he disapproves of working women, the two share a “desire to see the world and experience everything intensely,” and when he offers to recognize Emilia as his legitimate child, she accepts. Now the story gathers pace, with Emilia—always and predictably the rebel—witnessing the horrors of battle, discovering that she and Eric are in love, and getting arrested. Not quite plausibly, she instigates a further sequence of impulsive moves before the story is permitted to conclude.
An action-packed, brightly detailed historical novel not much hampered by its thinly characterized central figure.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593975091
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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