THEY SAY SARAH

Name: THEY SAY SARAH
Author: Pauline Delabroy-Allard
ISBN: 978-1-63542-985-5

by Pauline Delabroy-Allard ; translated by Adriana Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020

A dizzying, lush flight through the ecstasy and devastation of an incendiary romance and the grief that follows its loss.

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In a whirlwind of queer eroticism, classical strings, and vernal sensuality, debut novelist Delabroy-Allard whips up a bracing portrait of consumptive love and mutual obsession.

A young mother and new teacher in Paris has found herself adrift, “living a life [she] never thought [she’d] live” following her husband’s sudden departure. Left to raise their young daughter alone, the unnamed narrator “walk[s] around like a ghost,” the sudden shift in identity rendering her vulnerable, transparent, thrust into "a period of latency." Drawing her back into the world and its fecund, proliferating springtime is Sarah, a woman she met at a New Year's party who has quickly woven herself into the fabric of the narrator’s life, sparking off a liminal hum of possibility that buzzes between them. Sarah, a successful violinist who darts in and out of the city on tour with her quartet, is too much in every respect—she drinks too much, smokes too many cigarettes, wears too much makeup, is too loud, too magnetic. In her faded and fragile state, the narrator absorbs Sarah's radiance until she too begins first to shine, then burn as their unsustainable passion increasingly erupts in violence and despair. Each time Sarah departs and returns, the narrator is torn apart and stitched back together, until finally she's worn too thin for further repair. While the cumulative effect of repetition can at times slow rather than drive the swell of the narrative's crescendo, overall the prose exerts a tidal pull, and the book's structure skillfully mirrors the story's atmosphere: The short vignettes that constitute Part I replicate the breathless swirl of the narrator's turbulent affair with Sarah while lengthening chapters throughout Part II reflect her descent into rambling dishevelment and a sense of being stuck in time. In this second half, the narrator flees Paris for Italy in a frantic attempt to resurrect herself from the ashes of her devastation when her relationship with Sarah finally collapses beneath the weight of its own fraught history.

A dizzying, lush flight through the ecstasy and devastation of an incendiary romance and the grief that follows its loss.

Pub Date: June 2, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-63542-985-5

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Other Press

Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE WEDDING PEOPLE

by Alison Espach ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 30, 2024

Uneven but fitfully amusing.

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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

Categories:

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
NOTES ON YOUR SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE
by Alison Espach

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ADULTS
by Alison Espach

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THREE DAYS IN JUNE

by Anne Tyler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 11, 2025

Sweet, sharp, and satisfying.

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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.