A vividly drawn period piece about violence and race in America.
Two kids living in the Bronx grow up in an era dominated by drugs, racial tension, and the Vietnam War in this novel.
Jaylen Jackson and his brother, Jamani, are swept out of the Jim Crow South by their mother, Tyra, after their father disappears. Jimmy O’Farrell’s father, Matthew, moves his family to New York City from Ireland, hoping to become part of America’s immigration legacy. Both Jaylen and Jimmy find a home in the Bronx, yet outside their passion for basketball, they have remarkably different experiences there and only cross paths on “The Courts.” Jimmy feels comfortable in the heavily Irish community, but after a violent gang attack takes a friend’s life, he is ill at ease around the Black and Hispanic families in New York’s melting pot. Jaylen, meanwhile, discovers that while the “Whites Only” signs of Mississippi are long gone, his skin color still matters, and he eventually leaves college to join the Marines, an institution that promises a life beyond such prejudice. But this is the 1960s, and the Vietnam War rages, and even for an accomplished soldier, there is no real equality to be unearthed in the Asian jungles. What he does find, surprisingly, is Jimmy, now a Marine himself and happy to see a familiar face from the Bronx. When both are wounded, a chance encounter on the USS Sanctuary gives Jaylen a blunt moment to peel back the racial facade that separates them, a revelation that will shape the two men’s decisions after returning home. Coffino employs an understandable language in the novel’s action scenes, particularly on the basketball court and with other team sports. Even Jimmy and his family’s listening to the 1960s World Series is exciting and high stakes. New York comes alive in the book, a place of great history and infinite possibility, with people of all races and creeds constantly in both cooperation and conflict. Vietnam is deftly captured as a carnal, violent place, and the only setting that comes up short in the story is its portrayal of Jim Crow Mississippi, its communities, perhaps rightfully, taking a back seat to its vile politics. Dreams, folklore, and Bible verses foreshadow events and outline characters’ anxieties, connecting them beyond race and through a shared culture and experiences.
A vividly drawn period piece about violence and race in America.Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64663-350-0
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Sweet, sharp, and satisfying.
Their daughter’s wedding stirs up uncomfortable memories for a divorced couple.
The day before the ceremony, the bride’s mother, Gail Baines, second in command at the Ashton School in Baltimore, learns that not only has she been passed over to replace the retiring headmistress, but the new recruit is bringing her deputy with her. The lack of people skills that have cost Gail this promotion are evident even in that initial scene; she’s a classic cranky Tyler protagonist, given to blurting out her opinions with little consideration for others’ feelings. Her first-person narration also reveals her to be touchingly vulnerable, convinced that daughter Debbie, prettier and more polished than she, will inevitably prefer husband-to-be Kenneth’s overbearing, better-off parents. Although her divorce from Max was amicable, Gail considers him a bit of a slacker, and isn’t best pleased when he turns up with a rescue cat in tow and says he has to stay with her because Kenneth is horribly allergic. A startling revelation from Debbie, fresh from her pre-wedding “Day of Beauty,” immediately divides the exes, who have very different opinions about how their daughter should handle this crisis. It also leads to Gail’s revelation of the infidelity that led to their divorce, though not in the way readers might imagine. Laid-back Max is the only fully fleshed character here other than Gail, and the novel is very short, but Tyler’s touch is as delicate, her empathy for human beings and all their quirks as evident in her 25th work of fiction as it was in her first, published an astonishing 60 years ago. Gail’s acerbic observations about the wedding and all its participants, her wistful memories of her odd-couple romance with Max, and her account of their enforced intimacy over the three days surrounding the wedding alternate to poignant effect. The closing pages offer a happy ending that feels true to the characters and utterly deserved.
Sweet, sharp, and satisfying.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593803486
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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