A novel that can’t decide how seriously we should take its psychologically damaged characters.
In this provocative debut novel, a woman reflects on her relationship with her brother as he’s dying of brain cancer.
After their mother took her own life by walking into Long Island Sound and their father unravels from grief, Ava and Demetri, only a year apart in age, practically raise themselves. Demetri, a precocious kid, heads off to Harvard, and Ava, a talented painter, tags along, sleeping under his bed. Ava believes their identities are so entwined that she falls apart when Demetri starts dating: “It never occurred to me…that Demetri would be attracted to someone without me. Because different desires would make us what we were not—namely, two separate people.” Ava’s solution is to insert herself into all of Demetri’s relationships, convincing his love interests to slip out of their clothes and pose for nude portraits. Her greatest victory (and shame) is when she finds herself actually falling in love with one of these women. Desiring the same woman, it turns out, drives them apart. Ava is a thoroughly unsympathetic narrator, which is not itself a problem. Writers like Ottessa Moshfegh, Emma Cline, and Elizabeth Strout have created memorably difficult female protagonists. And yet, through absurdity and humor, the slow revelation of pathos, or searing social critique, their novels both wink at readers and nudge them to stop being so judgmental. It’s hard to know how we’re supposed to understand Dess’ novel, which satirizes the contemporary art world—Ava’s first major sale is a series of paintings literally produced as she’s having sex with men—and perhaps Ava, too, though her narcissism starts to feel thin and sad. Right before Demetri dies and he’s barely conscious, Ava shows him a portrait of their shared lover, seeking his approval one last time. It’s a painful scene to read.
A novel that can’t decide how seriously we should take its psychologically damaged characters.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593830826
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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