An impressive, dynamic host of spectacular stories filled with engaging characters.
This anthology of stories, edited by Skeeter, illuminates the aftermath of life-changing events.
This book’s 25 stories, by as many authors, follow a diverse cast experiencing changes brought about by internal and external forces. In Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “Doors,” Preeti heads right back to Berkeley after she and Deepak wed. The two live together peacefully and accept each other’s differences, like Preeti’s preference for locking the door when she’s in the bathroom. Deepak’s old friend Raj, and his callous disregard for privacy, however, throws off the couple’s balance. In Charles Johnson’s “Night Shift,” Lucas works at a hospital at the height of the Covid pandemic. When someone he knows rolls into the hospital with a gunshot wound, Lucas must make a decision that could threaten the career he’s fought hard to achieve. Many of the tales revolve around families or relationships, encompassing struggling marriages, sometimes-vexing relatives, and loved ones surviving a pandemic. There’s diversity not only among the authors and their characters, but among the stories as well; they showcase a variety of genres, including romance, melodrama, comedy, and even a hint of fantasy. Brenda Peynado takes readers to an exceptionally grim dystopia in her outstanding “The Touches,” in which individuals steer clear of the “dirty,” disease-riddled corporeal world in favor of the “clean” virtual-reality alternative. As the story progresses, the narrator, Salipa, counts off the mere four times she’s made physical contact with others.
The editor, who also contributes a story of her own, gathers an extraordinary collection of tales, rich with relatable character portraits that the authors tackle in numerous ways; several stories draw in readers with second-person narrations. In the case of Donna Miscolta’s “Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother Earth,” the English alphabet helps relay the journey of a mother raising her daughter (“M is for make-believe we are fine”). Even the more extreme scenarios manage to hit home: In Clarence Major’s “Innocence,” the narrator witnesses a double murder but seems more perturbed by the apparent confirmation that a lover has been unfaithful. While this collection has its share of standouts, there’s simply no lull in the run of stories. They’re teeming with compelling figures, like Jake in Joseph Bruchac’s “Vision,” an Indigenous man who’s a former special forces soldier and an aspiring novelist. There are also delightfully lighthearted turns; in Joanna Scott’s “Teardrop,” a woman spends a memorable day with her 6-year-old niece, Jody, whose innocent and frankly hilarious vandalism leads to disastrous results. The prose throughout is consistently sound: As Shannon Sanders (“The Good, Good Men”) writes, “Lee had met their father at a District jazz lounge that no longer existed, a place Miles had long imagined as dark and deliciously moody like the man himself, with threads of light piano melody curling through the air between sets.” Such passages electrify narratives that readers will surely savor.
An impressive, dynamic host of spectacular stories filled with engaging characters.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781950584864
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Green Writers Press
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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