A moving, poetically rendered tale of personal pain buried deep in willful self-reinvention.
A lawyer in the United States who escaped Communist Vietnam as a child receives mysterious postcards from a childhood friend that reopen old emotional wounds.
Mimi works in Washington, D.C., as a lawyer. Lost in the hazy blur of her hectic career, she rarely pauses to consider her traumatic childhood. Born and raised in Vietnam, she fled the country with her family in 1975 when Saigon fell to the Communists. Her grandmother refused to join them, however, afraid that her frailty would prevent their escape. Years later, now a successful professional living a thoroughly American life, Mimi begins to receive postcards from someone named Nam—she can’t recall anyone of that name, but he seems to know her well, referring to her as Mi Chau, the Vietnamese name no one she knows now uses. Her mother remembers him, though, as a sweet boy who lived across the alley in Saigon, a talented artist who brought Mimi treats, told her ghost stories, and tearfully professed his love for her. Mimi becomes obsessed with finding Nam and learning his fate, a dogged pursuit that brings her into a long overdue confrontation with her own, formerly silenced demons, a struggle affectingly portrayed by author Duong. “Nam became my project—the symbol for my pursuit of nobility and the return to my roots.” In nimble prose, the author explores the intractability of the protagonist’s past, as resistant to revision as it is to evasion. Mimi is a memorably drafted character, both emotionally fragile and relentless. This is a brief novella—under 100 pages—but densely layered with poignancy and nuance.
A moving, poetically rendered tale of personal pain buried deep in willful self-reinvention.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61218-018-2
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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
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