An inventive and shameless story collection for the chronically online.
Rejection alters the course of reality for the characters in this memorable novel-in-stories.
Tulathimutte’s innovative collection features seven interconnected stories all dealing with rejection in one way or another. Contextualizing the whole collection, the opening story, “The Feminist,” follows a self-proclaimed feminist man over decades as he gathers his “thickening dossier of unfairness.” In “Pics,” Alison, a woman in her late 20s, becomes unintentionally obsessed with a longtime friend with whom she’s had a one-time fling. In between stalking him on social media, crafting apology emails, adopting a unique and questionable pet, and considering starting a podcast, she texts her friends from a former internship; the group chat—full of sexual puns, therapy-speak, comedic bits, and emojis—shows the full extent of Alison’s spiral. In “Our Dope Future,” a home-schooled “serial entrepreneur, inventor, and futurist” writes a Reddit post from hell; using co-opted slang, the narrator slowly reveals the lengths he’s willing to go to firm up his romantic and domestic future. Tulathimutte is unafraid to write the most disturbing, disgusting, and delightfully deranged things. Each time you think the characters have hit rock bottom, they pull out a shovel and start digging more. Some have a stunning lack of self-awareness, while others are too aware to function. They all, however, seem to be bottomless pits of want and desire and vulnerability. Their need for approval, acceptance, relevancy, and even chaos is so intense that it can feel nauseating at times. Tulathimutte’s writing is not only smart, but laugh-out-loud funny. In “Ahegao, or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression,” the newly out narrator tries to explain the vanilla version of his sexual desires to his boyfriend—and his boyfriend cracks an incredible Stanley Kubrick sex joke. The characters, ideas, and symbols echo across the stories, and these metatextual layers—along with the layers of internet lore and memes—create a hilariously brazen and existentially unsettling portrait of modern life, love, and identity.
An inventive and shameless story collection for the chronically online.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780063337879
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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