An ambitious, sometimes cumbersome dystopian tale.
Near-future Earth is in deep trouble. The humanity-saving space station isn’t looking so good either.
Scherm’s second novel, after Unbecoming (2015), is a high-concept domestic novel that merges science fiction and eco-fiction tropes while braiding a host of characters and subplots. The main one involves Alex, a beleaguered scientist who has long been hoping to create a species of algae that can consume enough carbon dioxide to stem global warming. That crisis is racing out of control by 2033, when the novel is largely set, from constant wildfires to Midwestern heat waves that kill tens of thousands at a time. Alex has been recruited by Sensus, a Google/Apple–ish megacorp, to do his research on Parallaxis I, a space station orbiting Earth that’s designed partly for research, partly as an escape hatch for billionaires looking to get away from the chaos down below. Alex’s thoughts are earthbound, though: He’s recently separated from his wife, and his teenage daughter, Mary Agnes, is suffering rounds of cyberbullying and deepfake revenge porn facilitated by Sensus products. Added into this drama are Tess, a researcher hired to perfect an algorithm monitoring the behavior of Alex and Parallaxis’ other occupants, and the two sisters who run Sensus, often in a contentious relationship. And more: other scientists, family members, and billionaire occupants grumpy over delays and cost overruns. It’s all a lot—too much, really, for a novel that works the familiar theme that a change of scenery won’t erase our flaws. But credit Scherm for striving to give the climate change novel a wider yet still realistic scope and for creating some nuanced characters in Alex and Mary Agnes, who are both eager to do the right thing but undone by humanity, its fickle nature, and its allegedly liberating but often self-imprisoning technologies.
An ambitious, sometimes cumbersome dystopian tale.Pub Date: March 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-10-198010-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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