A masterfully controlled tear-jerker of a novel about found family.
In Miller’s debut literary novel, a runaway unexpectedly comes to rely on an elderly woman.
The unnamed boy who narrates the novel first encounters Ruth while he’s smashing sunflower seeds with a rock outside her apartment. Ruth is a patient, joke-loving elderly woman who lives in a retirement community. The narrator is a grumpy, unhoused 8-year-old who hates approximately “573” things, including lollipops, home renovation shows, and anything that doesn’t make sense or wastes time. After Ruth slowly gains the boy’s trust by offering him cookies over a few days, the two build up a dialogue over games of hearts and televised baseball (the boy is a devoted collector of baseball cards). When it becomes clear that the boy has nowhere else to go, Ruth invites him to stay on her couch. She has a few ground rules related to the bathroom and the remote control, but Ruth seems especially set on one rule: “Under this roof,” she tells the boy, “there’s no talking about the past. No asking me how I got here. No asking what happened to me the day before we met, or the week before, or a year ago, or 10 years ago, or 70 years ago. That goes for both of us, including you.” The boy agrees, though his residence must remain a secret due to the rules of the retirement community. Life is good for a time; the boy hides under the sink whenever anyone comes over, and Ruth sneaks him food from the cafeteria. She encourages the boy to let his guard down and appreciate the good things in life, though he resists as much as he relents. But after an accident suffered during an impromptu vacation results in a dramatic shift in Ruth’s personality, the boy is forced to adapt—and learn about the interconnectedness of love and loss.
The boy narrates the story from the cusp of his adulthood, referring to Ruth as “you.” He channels his younger worldview as he does: “I tried not to think about cookies. I flipped through the puzzle book to distract myself. I told myself I would never go back to see you. Never ever. Not even for $1,000,000 worth of donuts. I started working on a medium-hard puzzle, messed up right away, and ripped the page out of the book.” The relationship between Ruth and the boy in the first half of the novel is a bit reminiscent of the film Harold and Maude (minus the romantic element); Ruth is a bighearted, language-loving extrovert who delights in nearly everything. Miller’s innovation comes in the book’s second half, when Ruth’s kindness to another boy backfires horribly, forcing the narrator to become her caretaker. From then on, the novel becomes an increasingly heartbreaking story of the boy realizing who Ruth really is to him and what he needs to be to her. Miller’s deeply felt tale illustrates how life’s greatest challenges always arrive before we’re ready for them, and how they shape us into the people we become.
A masterfully controlled tear-jerker of a novel about found family.Pub Date: June 21, 2024
ISBN: 9798990770904
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Lost Pictograph Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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