A novel about the families we inherit and the ones we make for ourselves.
A sprawling, multigenerational portrait of a mixed-race family that begins with a man's quest to uncover the truth of his origins.
Jenry Castillo, a talented pianist raised by Marisa, a single mother from a family of Cuban immigrants, sets off from Miami to begin his first semester at Brown University. He's desperate to find out more about his biological father, Jasper Patterson, a famous Black ballet dancer his mother met when she studied there and who died young in a tragic accident. Soon after arriving in Providence, he meets Jasper’s relatives—his own biological grandfather, Winston, and aunt, Juliet—and the real story of his heritage proves to be more complicated than he'd imagined. With a dizzying narrative that zips from character to character and weaves between present and past, from Providence to Miami to New York to Cuba, Harper has created a novel about longing, loss, kinship, talent, queerness, and what makes a family. At its heart is the story of two young women, Marisa and Juliet, who love each other and decide to have a baby together—and all the lies and secrets and betrayals that unfurl from that choice. Juliet, the "other mother," is a complicated, fully imagined character whose warmth and charm make you root for her even as her darker angels—addiction, selfishness, a desperate need for artistic success—threaten the new life she’s built since losing contact with Jenry. The descriptive language is sharpest in these sections: Juliet, once a talented jazz pianist, describes the way windshield wipers give her a feeling of comfort, “like the metronome always used to, marking the top of her piano like an emblem marks the hood of a car.” The raw intensity of Juliet’s feelings for Jenry, the fear and desire his arrival brings into her life, and her desperation not to make the same mistakes again offer real stakes and drive the narrative forward pleasurably. Some of the sections feel less necessary. The story of Jasper is lovely but ultimately distracting from the main arc. Even Jenry’s section, the theoretical raison d'être of the novel, is sluggish and overdetermined. Twists and turns introduced in the historical sections complicate the facts of Jenry’s birth and move the plot forward without illuminating the deeper, more interesting conflicts between characters in the present—or creating space for unexpected revelations in the future.
A novel about the families we inherit and the ones we make for ourselves.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64009-504-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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