An abundance of heart makes up for underdeveloped side plots in this story of life after loss.
In gentrifying Brooklyn, a mother and daughter grapple with the death of their small family's patriarch and the ways his death cause them to reconsider their lives and values.
Three years after the death of 33-year-old Mónica Flores’ father, Martín, Mónica finds a small piece of paper tucked under his urn in the Brooklyn home she shares with her 63-year-old mother, Paula. In Paula’s handwriting, the paper reads: “Forgive me if I failed you. Remember that I always loved you.” This discovery—which Mónica keeps secret, despite her shock at its message—sets up the stilted relationship between mother and daughter and their navigation of grief and regret. Mónica (a.k.a. Flores, the name she adopted at work) is overworked and underappreciated at the Bowl, a tech startup selling “aquatic creations” (a refreshing break from the digital media startups that saturate millennial workplace fiction). Flores’ six-figure debt, as well as the impending end of her lease, weighs heavily on her mind, and she experiences a crisis of conscience when her colleague presents a plot to increase share prices at the expense of their boss’ position. Meanwhile, Paula spends her days working at a local discount store; taking walks with Vicente, a married friend with whom she shares a complicated past; and trying to figure out how she wants to spend “la tercera edad” of her life—years she’d imagined would be spent traveling between New York and Lima with Martín. Each judges the other’s decisions, and the disconnect and grudges they’ve carried since Flores was a little girl, once mediated by Martín, are amplified in his absence. Paula’s narration is the more affecting of the two perspectives; her insights about motherhood, marriage, and how both can feel like traps are simple but profound. Precarity—of identity, money, shelter, relationships, health—is the central tension for both women: How do we muster the strength and hope to move forward despite life’s fragility and disappointments? It’s a question rich enough to stand on its own; unfortunately, it’s crowded by side characters and minor plots. Still, Flores and Paula are so vibrant and endearing that they minimize these narrative frustrations.
An abundance of heart makes up for underdeveloped side plots in this story of life after loss.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780063272491
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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