Despite a handful of evocative moments, a novel that fails to cohere into a meaningful whole.
Contemporary Egyptian life glimpsed through a magical realist lens.
At the heart of Kheir’s first novel translated into English are the meanderings of young journalist Seif and his subject, Bahr, an enigmatic collector of stories who has returned from several years in Europe to the Egypt he dismisses as a “shithouse of a country” in the wake of the revolution. As the pair visit Alexandria, where they engage in a daredevil game with passing streetcars and cross the Nile River on foot, Bahr spins out tales that blend concrete detail with fanciful elements, offering bits of his melancholy perspective on life along the way. Among them are the account of his arrest and brutal treatment after a street demonstration and an oddly charming parable involving a bureaucrat named Yehyia who becomes part of a government effort to waste citizens’ time on purpose. Spirits and voices are recurring elements. There is the story of Ahmed, who is called upon to communicate with his late father to help his impoverished fellow villagers make a collective decision about whether to abandon their homes. Seif’s girlfriend, Alya, possesses an unusual talent for re-creating any imaginable sound while Salaam, a young man with a persistent stutter, can only overcome it when he sings. Some of these fragmentary, dreamlike anecdotes are loosely connected, but those links are elusive at best. Then there are promising premises—like the one involving Ashraf, the young doctor recruited as a member of a medical staff at a private clinic whose work involves caring for a single patient, a wealthy businessman who has “resolved not to die”—that are introduced, never to be revived. For a Western audience lacking Kheir’s cultural context, it’s likely that many of these episodes will prove more puzzling than resonant.
Despite a handful of evocative moments, a novel that fails to cohere into a meaningful whole.Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949641-16-5
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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