A modest but absurdly funny retelling of a classic tale.
A woman finds herself stuck in a bizarre version of her normal life in this contemporary play on Lewis Carroll’s celebrated works.
As the story opens, Alice, a 26-year-old waitress at the Madd Hatter Bar & Restaurant in (fictional) Hobohemia, New Jersey, is going home for the night. On her way to her Brooklyn apartment, she hits a pothole and drives her electric scooter right into sheets of glass and mirrors. When she comes to, she’s back at the bar, only things have become rather curious. Her friend and co-worker Naida, for one, is now an anthropomorphized cat named Dinah. Other characters pop up that readers may also find familiar, from a hookah-smoking caterpillar in the cellar to a regular patron with furry white paws and long, floppy rabbit ears. Alice can’t explain any of what’s happening, although everyone else in the bar seems unfazed. Confounding things further is her apparent memory loss, as she can’t recall how she got to work or where her scooter is. She can only hope that someone in this motley bunch has answers. B, the author of The Freaky Fungal Family Tree (2021), keeps things lighthearted in this tale, which offers such sights as a knight in full armor randomly kicking patrons’ backsides. Characters are more peculiar than frightening, even as “the Redd Queen” screams threats. Despite all this, Alice has a grounded, relatable backstory; she’s a Croatian immigrant who’s racked up debt because of the Covid-19 lockdown’s closing many restaurants. This novel, despite its brevity, sometimes feels stagnant, as it unfolds almost entirely in the crowded bar. It all leads to an illuminating denouement that most readers will see coming thanks to B’s dropping periodic clues throughout. Krakow’s simple artwork comprises sparsely detailed black-and-white sketches save for one of Alice on a scooter and an ethereal, starry night sky.
A modest but absurdly funny retelling of a classic tale.Pub Date: May 13, 2022
ISBN: 9798824008821
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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