An imperfect but often arresting fiction collection.
A volume of literary novellas and short stories ponders death and God.
Heaven isn’t far away in this collection—but its proximity isn’t necessarily a good thing. The house of the title novella is home to the Rosenweigs, Polish Jews fresh from Hitler’s Europe, who seek to build a new life for themselves in upstate New York. The novella takes its name from the adjacent seven-story ramp used by workers at the local General Electric plant. The family’s youngest daughter, Davora, wants nothing more than to break out of the rigid future prescribed for her by her parents—even as strange religious visions cause her to question her sanity. A second novella, A Factotum in the Land of Palms, follows a former Florida real estate agent with loose morals who loses his job when his employer is investigated for human trafficking. The ex-agent moves to California looking to start over. There, he is thrown for a loop by the many disparate characters and philosophical traditions he encounters in and around Los Angeles. The accompanying short stories deal with aging and loss: A man in his 70s contemplating his life and legacy sees a phantom coffin on his lawn; a husband, whose health-nut wife just left him, stages a condiment-heavy feast for one. Morganstern’s prose is sharp and surprising. He’s able to capture his characters’ humanity with a few revealing descriptions, as here in A Factotum in the Land of Palms: “I stared at him, the guy I knew in college. The angle man as he was known because he was the self-proclaimed master at zeroing in on what benefited himself the most at any given moment. At least he did when he wasn’t drunk and hurling partially digested pizza and beer on the monuments in the quad.” The novellas have impressively expansive worlds, but both drag a bit, especially in comparison to the three short stories. Even so, the pieces are in conversation with one another, and the book works as a thoughtful, evolving meditation on grief and acceptance.
An imperfect but often arresting fiction collection.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73374-647-2
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Recital Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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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