The marriage of shallow suspense plot and deep character study creates the wrong kind of page-turner.
An unhappy interaction between a private school teacher and a difficult student inspires a decadeslong revenge scheme.
From the title out, Gordon’s 20th book aspires to be a snappy, plot-driven novel with a premise based on reality TV—a socially current, Jodi Picoult–ish type of book. Agnes Vaughan, an art teacher at the Lydia Farnsworth School in New England, tries to embrace an extraordinarily miserable and universally disliked student named Heidi Stolz. But her suggestion that Heidi take a trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York leads to a terrible misadventure for Heidi, and her initial reaction to hearing that Heidi went to a strange man's apartment is a bit harsh: “How could you have done that?” These six words set a disastrous course for the rest of both of their lives that culminates in a big, televised shebang several decades (and hundreds of pages) later and then a bunch of additional smaller shebangs as the book keeps refusing to end. Hung on the scaffolding of this silly plot is another sort of book entirely, a deep and dilatory character study of Agnes Vaughan, both her interior life (she is obsessed with the origins of words and the way we use language) and her biography (she quits teaching, moves to Italy, becomes an art restorer, has a child, has a grandchild, moves back to the U.S., all the while suffering continually for her supposed crime against Heidi). Major philosophical digressions abound—about the love of one’s work, about the love of one’s dog, about motherhood and marriage, about the persistence of “hatred and ugliness” in the world, and much more—and some of these are quite wonderful, but they end up feeling like ballast in the unwieldy mess that is this novel. Despite all Gordon's detailed fleshing-out of the ruminative Agnes, the villainous Heidi is completely nuance-free, with a backstory of Grimm Brothers–style grimness, hateable from the heels of her stilettos to the spiky tips of her hair, from her predilection for vicious lying to her enthusiasm for Ayn Rand. (As bad as she is, her mother is even worse!) And after all this, the ending—the long awaited payback—is unsatisfying, since the truth is never confronted and Agnes is never actually exonerated for her imaginary crime.
The marriage of shallow suspense plot and deep character study creates the wrong kind of page-turner.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-524-74922-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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PERSPECTIVES
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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