Next book

AT THE HOUR BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF

Free of sentiment but not without hope of redemption, this is a suspenseful and chilling story.

A Jewish girl comes of age in Vichy France, relentlessly deformed by the spiritual rot of her era.

"My name is Marie-Jeanne Chantier, and I am twelve years old. My parents named me for the Blessed Virgin, and also for Saint Jeanne d’Arc, the young girl who had short hair and saved France from hostile foreign invaders a long time ago....Maman and Papa died last year in a tragic car accident outside Paris, bringing toys to poor orphans at the convent. Now I live here in the country in La Perrine, with tante Berthe, tonton Claude, and cousin Luc, who were very kind to take me in with good Christian charity and give me such a wonderful home." So says a "stupid assignment" written for school by a clever Parisian preteen actually named Danielle Marton. In fact, Danielle's Jewish mother has smuggled her to the countryside to masquerade as the niece of former family servants while she herself faces the jaws of the wolf—which have already snapped shut on her husband, Danielle's beloved Papa. Though in many obvious ways this third novel is a departure from Ison's previous work, including Ball (2015), a collection of contemporary gothic horror stories, on closer examination this is a horror story: The newly minted Marie-Jeanne seems to cathect the evil around her until she has completely forgotten who she is, what she cares about, whom she loves. Ison is unflinching in her depiction of the self-inflicted corruption that replaces the character's moral core with a twisted version of Christianity, brilliantly illustrating the epigraph from Solzhenitsyn: "To do evil, a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.” Most abhorrent are the trajectories of Marie-Jeanne's friendship with her peers—Genevieve, another Jewish girl in hiding, and her "cousin" Luc, who undergoes a transformation diametrically opposed to hers.

Free of sentiment but not without hope of redemption, this is a suspenseful and chilling story.

Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023

ISBN: 9781632461452

Page Count: 298

Publisher: Ig Publishing

Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 16


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

Next book

THE WEDDING PEOPLE

Uneven but fitfully amusing.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 16


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller

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

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 16


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • IndieBound Bestseller

Next book

THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND

A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 16


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • IndieBound Bestseller

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

Close Quickview