More like a string of humor-columns than a novel, then, with hit-or-miss punchlines--but sure to please Ephron fans and some...
Wife Discovers Husband's Infidelity, Must Decide What To Do: that's the routine sliver of plot here.
Wife Discovers Husband's Infidelity, Must Decide What To Do: that's the routine sliver of plot here. But essentially this slender first novel is just a framework for an Ephronesque series of stand-up-comic routines, journalistic one-liners, and movie-farce-style vignettes--an occasionally funny but edgily unsatisfying tsimmes. The wisecracking narrator is cookbook-writer/TV-celebrity Rachel Samstat, who one day realizes that her Washington-columnist husband Mark Feldman, the ultimate "Jewish prince," is having an affair with Thelma Rice, giant wife of a blitheringly neurotic Undersecretary of State. Mark confesses--but doesn't offer to give Thelma up. Spurred on by celebrity-shrink Vera ("every so often she has to fly off to co-host Merv Griffin"), pregnant Rachel storms off to her beloved N.Y.C. with tot Sam while reviewing her marriages (#1 was "a low-grade lunatic who kept hamsters"). She rejoins her therapy group--which gets robbed. She flies back to D.C. when Mark seems interested in a reconciliation. But finally, after giving birth, Rachel tells Mark off, throws a pie in his face, and instantly winds up in the arms of an adorable New Yorker for an upbeat fadeout. Throughout, Ephron fails to find the right balance between satire and soap--reaching for laughs (and canceling out empathy) with outlandish cartoon shriek, then lurching for the heart-strings with Rachel's crying-behind-the-jokes sentimentality. ("Because if I tell the story, it doesn't hurt as much,") Only one moment lifts off into inspired, manic-but-believable comedy: Rachel, in a desperate/vengeful panic, spreads the rumor that Thelma has gotten a gynecological infection. (In a Vietnamese restaurant: "The toilet seat, I guess. . . although I'm not sure. Maybe from the spring rolls.") And the rest consists of Rachel's uneven musings on being Jewish, being in Washington, being Jewish in Washington, the Sixties, Phil Donahue, Lillian Hellman, the Eastern Airlines shuttle, cellulite, sex, shrinks, marriage, and cooking. Plus: lots of not-quite-funny aphorisms ("Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in winter and I'll show you a real asshole"); tired send-ups of Women's Lib; and many, many recipes. (My Search for Warren Harding, p. 206, also was big on recipes: is this the new trend in cute-fiction substitutes for content?) More like a string of humor-columns than a novel, then, with hit-or-miss punchlines--but sure to please Ephron fans and some of Gall Parent's too.
More like a string of humor-columns than a novel, then, with hit-or-miss punchlines--but sure to please Ephron fans and some of Gall Parent's too.Pub Date: May 4, 1983
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1983
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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