A meandering campus novel about finding one’s place in a crucial moment in history.
A college pitcher is caught between baseball and Nixon-era campus politics in Puszykowski’s debut novel.
John Light walked onto his baseball team at his small Michigan college suddenly in possession of an impressive fastball that had eluded him during his high school career. Now he’s in his senior year and the team has a real shot at winning the league championship. John should be excited, but he’s discontent. The philosophy and politics he’s been reading about at night—unrelated to his pharmacy major—have been exposing him to new ideas, helping him to see the flaws in America and its institutions, and he’s beginning to suspect some sort of youth-led revolutionary change might be necessary. Even though it’s 1972, conservative Wrencher College hasn’t yet felt the spirit of the 1960s. “Every year brought more long hair, more beards, more flared, torn jeans, more tie-dye, more beads, and more flannel shirts, but no groups organized to spread information or employ rebellious energy like everywhere else on the planet,” John narrates. “Wrencher was a time bubble stuck ten years in the past.” As John starts to attend peace rallies and demonstrations, he gets connected to a network of student activists, at Wrencher and elsewhere, who are willing to go to extreme lengths to make their voices heard. Meanwhile, his well-meaning coach’s efforts to secure the team the championship are undermined by the players’ antics, immaturity, and penchant for distraction. When the opportunity arises for John to put his politics into action, he must decide which rules he is willing to break, and what it will mean—for himself and for his team—when he breaks them.
Puszykowski is an adept writer, particularly about baseball. Here, John imagines a fireball moving through his body as he throws a pitch: “As I pushed forward to pitch, it rode up my thrusting thigh muscles, entered my twisting hips and into my upper torso as I opened up, shot through my pitching arm as it whipped forward, crackled through the snap of my wrist, and sparked out from my fingers as they propelled the baseball: powerful, rhythmic and fluent.” But the combination of baseball and radical campus activism makes for a sometimes overwhelming baby boomer cocktail—all 46 chapters are named for popular songs from the era, including “Bad Moon Rising,” “Instant Karma,” and “What’s Going On?” At one point, John and his catcher discuss Beatles lyrics: “I thought of how music can bring people together, like at Woodstock, ya know? That’s what this team needs, to pull together.” Puszykowski doesn’t seem to know much more than John does about what to do with this moment of cultural upheaval, failing to establish why it might be important or what any of it has to do with college baseball. The result is a narrative without much incident and a narrator too ambivalent and reserved to really carry a novel with his voice alone. The story is believable and successful at capturing a common experience of adolescence, but it is not always compelling.
A meandering campus novel about finding one’s place in a crucial moment in history.Pub Date: July 16, 2024
ISBN: 9798350956597
Page Count: 296
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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