A deeply affecting novel illuminating the costs of being a woman in a dangerous, misogynistic society.
A Brazilian lawyer bears witness to the flaws in her country’s justice system, especially regarding the murder of Indigenous women.
The young, unnamed narrator has traveled to a remote Amazonian border town to participate in a research project for her firm, taking notes on the trials of men accused of killing Indigenous women. The trip is well-timed as her lover, Amir, has turned abusive, and she is acutely aware of how abuse escalates; her own mother was killed by her father when she was a child. From a distance, she is more able to contemplate these experiences as part of a larger pattern of abuse and femicide in Brazil. Three wealthy young men are on trial for the gruesome rape and murder of Txupira, a 14-year-old Indigenous girl. The narrator witnesses the defense attorney meeting with three jurors in the middle of the night during the trial, and after this proof of corruption is publicized in the newspapers, the editor dies under suspicious circumstances. A friend introduces her to his mother's Indigenous community, which welcomes her and helps her recall more details of the night her mother died. Each chapter begins with the description of a woman being murdered by a man in her life as part of the research notebook the narrator is assembling, and as the violence continues, she decides to fight back by publishing the stories. Brazilian author Melo weaves together crime, magical realism, mythology, and social criticism in this relevant and urgent translation from the Portuguese by Lewis. Though the subject is horrifying, especially in the details about marred and dismembered victims, the narrator’s voice is captivating and compelling, offering strength and purpose rather than despair.
A deeply affecting novel illuminating the costs of being a woman in a dangerous, misogynistic society.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781632063465
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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