Commendably ambitious but only partially successful.
An imaginative, lyrical, and—unfortunately—timely parable about structural injustice from the author of Lakewood (2020).
Josephine Thomas is single, but she regularly hooks up with a man named Preston. She and her best friend, Angie, write comedy together, but Jo’s day job is at the Museum of Cursed Art. She’s about to turn 28, which means that—unless she marries soon—she’ll have to start reporting to the Bureau of Witchcraft for quarterly testing. The world Jo lives in looks very much like our own, right down to the fact that women who choose to have neither husbands nor children are suspect. The difference is that, in this alternate reality, the law assumes that such women are malevolent sorceresses in league with the devil. Jo’s mother taught her both that she was descended from a witch who was burned and that witchcraft isn’t real—that it’s just an excuse to persecute troublesome women. But her mother’s unbelief is not enough to protect Jo—then 14—from accusations of being a witch herself when her mother disappears. And the discovery, years later, that Jo can only claim her inheritance if she collects magical apples from a mysterious island forces her to reexamine everything she thinks she knows about herself. In her first novel, Giddings used tropes from horror and science fiction to explore race and class and generational trauma. Here, she uses fantasy in a similar fashion. And, again, she is particularly interested in what free will means in systems designed to constrain choice. Magic makes women vulnerable. It also empowers them with radical autonomy, and Giddings’ descriptions of magic at work are wonderfully evocative. But the pacing, structure, and worldbuilding leave a lot to be desired. The first half of the narrative moves very slowly, and readers who are here for enchantment are likely to be disappointed. The second half, on the other hand, flies by, leaving many nagging questions unanswered. Also, these two halves seem to take place in different universes. At the start of the story, Jo works, enjoys casual sex, goes out for drinks with friends, gets high, and generally lives a life that will be recognizable to many contemporary women. But the Bureau of Witchcraft as it emerges toward the end only makes sense as part of a government and society defined by fundamentalist Christian views that would make such license impossible, and Giddings does nothing to resolve this conflict.
Commendably ambitious but only partially successful.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311699-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
This propulsive thriller twists into the dark and bloody underbelly of the world of fine art.
The discovery that a revered artist’s sculpture contains a human bone sets off scandal and violence.
Art historian James Becker has what seems like a sweet deal. He’s the curator of the collection of the Fairburn Foundation, housed at a stately home owned by the Lennox family: Sebastian, Becker’s best friend, and his bitter mother, Lady Emmeline. Becker’s wife, Helena, was Sebastian’s fiancee first, but they’re all very civilized about it and happily awaiting the birth of her baby. The centerpiece of the Fairburn collection is works by the late Vanessa Chapman, an artist about whom Becker wrote his thesis, and with whom he is somewhat obsessed. Partly, it’s because of her great talent, but she was also a glamorous figure, a beauty who, as she became successful, sequestered herself on an isolated Scottish tidal island called Eris. She had a dark side—lots of stormy relationships, plus a philandering mooch of a husband who vanished without a trace a few decades ago. Her reputation, though, has risen after her death—so much so that the Fairburn has loaned some of her works to the Tate Modern. That’s where a forensic anthropologist sees one of her sculptures, made of found objects that include what’s described as an animal bone. The scientist is sure the bone is human, and soon Becker finds himself scrambling to prevent scandal. Vanessa willed her works and papers to the foundation, but some of them are still on Eris, guarded by her longtime friend Grace Haswell. A retired doctor, Grace lived with Vanessa off and on over the years and nursed her through her fatal cancer. It was a surprise when Vanessa left her estate not to Grace but to Douglas Lennox, Emmeline’s husband and Sebastian’s father. Douglas was Vanessa’s gallerist and lover, but the two had a nasty falling-out. Sebastian is so frustrated by Grace’s refusal to turn over all of the bequest that he’s ready to sue her, but Becker believes he can negotiate, so off to the the island he goes. He finds far more treachery and shocking secrets than he expected, past and present alike. Hawkins keeps her cast tight, her wild setting ominous, and her plot moving fast.
This propulsive thriller twists into the dark and bloody underbelly of the world of fine art.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9780063396524
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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