The fates are up to no good in this ennui-filled story of passive crime and guilt.
Here’s a book that reminds us in no uncertain terms that film noir would not exist without the French.
This may sound strange in relation to a story whose foul deed takes place at the beach and is committed by a teenager. But the lineage is there, in the language, in the staccato sentences, and most of all in the fatalism, the sense that we have no control and this is simply the way it had to be. The teenager is Leo, vacationing with his family and friends at a popular campsite in the southwest corner of France. The very first sentences spell out the reason for Leo’s feeling of doom: “Oscar is dead because I watched him die and did nothing. He was strangled by the ropes of a swing, like one of those children you read about in newspapers.” Leo didn’t kill Oscar, but he didn’t help him, either, and he didn’t hesitate to bury him on the beach. They liked the same girl, and, well, stuff happens. The short novel unfolds like an adolescent version of Camus’ The Stranger, as Leo spends pages considering the senselessness of what happened and feeling the weight of life’s ennui. The author is 26 and not too far removed from his antihero’s demographic and concerns, the everyday life here interrupted by death and guilt. At its best the book cranks out short, terse sentences like machine gun fire: “All was calm on this side of the dune. The tents and the bungalows were lost in the shadows. The only light came from the condom vending machine. ‘Protect yourself,’ it said.” At its worst, it gets two-dimensional and repetitive, descriptive on the surface but limited in scope. At the least, it’s a calling card for what should be a bright career.
The fates are up to no good in this ennui-filled story of passive crime and guilt.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982143-48-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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