An anarchic, experimental debut a bit too novel for its own good.
Three generations of Turkish Cypriots navigate British culture while profiting off the London underworld.
This is nominally a story about crime and punishment among immigrants in London’s multicultural Tottenham neighborhood, but interdisciplinary artist Cin throws in everything but the kitchen sink in terms of language, story, and structure. At the book’s center is Damla, born in 1991; the narrative encompasses her adolescence and early adulthood, but it’s more a story about the sacrifices people make to protect their families and themselves. In addition to Damla and her siblings, İpek and Erhan, the book spends a lot of time flashing back to the origins of their mother, Ayla, and their grandmother Makbule as well as a host of friends, lovers, criminals, and partners in crime. There’s a plot in here somewhere, something to do with Ayla’s scheme to smuggle heroin into the country disguised in cabbages, of all things, but there’s no consistency to the story. There is, however, some remarkable writing as well as keen characterizations of Damla’s companions, none of whom are painted in black and white. The book's greatest strength is its intense observational scrutiny, whether of the ubiquitous doldrums of work or the acute differences in the ways Damla and the people around her, notably her mother and grandmother, experience the world. The fragmented structure makes it read almost like a scrapbook; real deliberation is required in order to unearth the primary story and numerous subplots among scatterings of poetry and abrupt shifts in point of view. It’s clear there’s a method to the madness, though, as Cin writes, “Being the heroine of your own love story starts with a belief in magnetism, pulling the right corresponding elements towards you and somehow sifting out the debris.”
An anarchic, experimental debut a bit too novel for its own good.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-91350-508-0
Page Count: 216
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
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
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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