A sprightly, compelling tale with magical realist flair in which a novelist’s muse takes charge of her own story.
In this novel by Japanese writer Ayase, the first of her 18 works to be translated into English, a writer's wife transforms into a forest.
Ayase begins with the third-person point of view of an editor named Sekiguchi Masashi, who's visiting the house of Nowatari Tetsuya, a well-known novelist whose salacious debut featured thinly veiled details about his sexy young wife, Rui. None of his subsequent books have been as successful, and Sekiguchi is trying to help him with ideas. While there, he overhears the couple fight, and soon afterward Rui begins to sprout buds and leaves: She's turning into a forest because she suspects her husband of infidelity. Instead of taking her to the hospital, Nowatari writes a novel called Garden. And it’s really good! Sekiguchi finds himself in a moral quandary. "This horrifying situation, and the literary work based on it, were ultimately Nowatari’s sin. Sekiguchi was just supposed to receive his breathtaking manuscript and deliver it to the world....His job was no more than that, he repeated to himself over and over.” Meanwhile, in his own marriage, the editor fails to understand the ways he burdens his wife. In the second section, the point of view switches to the student Nowatari is having his affair with; he loves her “emptiness and purity.” Ayase’s concerns are contemporary gender roles, sexism in publishing (and society generally), and the relationship between exploitation and art. Her examination has depth and nuance. Male characters reflect on the pressures to compete and the perils of the succeed-or-die mentality. Meanwhile Rui’s forest grows and spreads, affecting the entire town. When Sekiguchi moves to another department, the young woman assigned to be Nowatari's new editor asks the writer a single blunt question.
A sprightly, compelling tale with magical realist flair in which a novelist’s muse takes charge of her own story.Pub Date: July 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781640095373
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.
Hung out to dry by the elders who betrayed them, a squad of pregnant teens fights back with old magic.
Hendrix has a flair for applying inventive hooks to horror, and this book has a good one, chock-full with shades of V.C. Andrews, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Foxfire, to name a few. Our narrator, Neva Craven, is 15 and pregnant, a fate worse than death in the American South circa 1970. She’s taken by force to Wellwood House in Florida, a secretive home for unwed mothers where she’s given the name Fern. She’ll have the baby secretly and give it up for adoption, whether she likes it or not. Under the thumb of the house’s cruel mistress, Miss Wellwood, and complicit Dr. Vincent, Neva forges cautious alliance with her fellow captives—a new friend, Zinnia; budding revolutionary Rose; and young Holly, raped and impregnated by the very family minister slated to adopt her child. All seems lost until the arrival of a mysterious bookmobile and its librarian, Miss Parcae, who gives the girls an actual book of spells titled How To Be a Groovy Witch. There’s glee in seeing the powerless granted some well-deserved payback, but Hendrix never forgets his sweet spot, lacing the story with body horror and unspeakable cruelties that threaten to overwhelm every little victory. In truth, it’s not the paranormal elements that make this blast from the past so terrifying—although one character evolves into a suitably scary antagonist near the end—but the unspeakable, everyday atrocities leveled at children like these. As the girls lose their babies one by one, they soon devote themselves to secreting away Holly and her child. They get some help late in the game but for the most part they’re on their own, trapped between forces of darkness and society’s merciless judgement.
A pulpy throwback that shines a light on abuses even magic can’t erase.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593548981
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
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
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