An intelligent and nuanced story of reunion.
In Friedman’s novel, an American archeologist discovers the true nature of her father’s disappearance when she was a child.
Dr. Klara Lieberman is a 49-year-old professor of anthropology with a specialty in archeology at Holbrook College, a small liberal arts institution in southern Maine. She’s alone and emotionally adrift, living a quietly comfortable but emotionally unsatisfying life. One day, she receives a letter from her estranged mother, Bessie, telling her that the Polish government is set to issue reimbursements to people whose property was stolen by the Nazis and the Communists; that group includes her father, David, who was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw in 1971. Klara is flummoxed; her mother had told her that her father left them when she was 6 years old, though he actually died in a train accident. She grew up knowing virtually nothing about her dad and being estranged from his family in Poland. Eager to meet her paternal aunt, Rachel, and to learn more about her father, she heads overseas; meanwhile, Bessie is only interested in the money. Friedman, a psychotherapist, delicately chronicles Klara’s emotional journey, during which she experiences a great catharsis and finally starts to feel as if she’s found a true home and identity. She also begins a romance with Filip Jablonski, a record-keeper and part-time groundskeeper at the Jewish Cemetery of Warsaw, although Klara’s unresolved trauma due to childhood sexual abuse complicates their relationship. The novel often feels like an academic exercise in psychotherapy; its accounts of Klara’s sessions with a therapist, Dr. Kowalski, feel contrived and didactic. Also, some of the psychological insights feel somewhat stale, as when the author describes Klara’s unsatisfied longing to “find out who she was and where she came from—and even more pressing, a burning need to belong to and be a part of something greater than herself.” That said, this remains a thoughtful book that sensitively explores the emotional possibilities inherent in discovering one’s ancestry. As such, it’s a dramatically powerful work, despite its flaws.
An intelligent and nuanced story of reunion.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781647426101
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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