You’ll probably be more generous with tips, and train rides will never be the same.
In 1929, being a passenger train porter was fraught with challenges.
R.T. Baxter greets you at the train, loads your luggage, escorts you to your compartment and your berth, gets you water, gets you liquor, gets you a sandwich, tells you the train’s schedule, shines your shoes, offers comfort, watches your child, cleans your toilet, makes your bed, and generally doesn’t sleep. He is a train porter. His duties run around the clock and offer few sympathies for missteps. Baxter aims for more. Eight years ago, he found a textbook on dentistry on the train that inspired him to become a dentist. Now, he’s saved $967 of the $1,068 he’ll need for four years of dentistry school. His goal seems in reach, but the odds are against him. The same passengers who offer him the means to reach his goals—tips—stand to get him fired through their complaints. If Baxter is said by passengers to be disloyal, dishonest, immoral, insubordinate, incompetent, careless, or untruthful, he’ll earn demerits, and with enough demerits he’ll be fired. Baxter is judged for being Black, judged for being gay, and the train’s passengers can say anything they like to earn him these demerits or even worse, like jail time. The system is rigged. The porters must buy their meals from their employers, are financially liable for lost or stolen train goods like linens and towels, and are at the mercy of their clientele. To top it off, these multiday train runs are heavy on work and light on sleep. Baxter’s own sleep deprivation is perhaps the most intriguing character of the book. It leads to hallucinations, questionable decisions, and borderline supernatural suggestions.
You’ll probably be more generous with tips, and train rides will never be the same.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-55245-445-9
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Coach House Books
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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