A likable, smart, wide-ranging ramble, good fun for those who like novels not aimless but a little aim-resistant.
An appealing hybrid of travelogue, dilettante’s diary, family saga, exposé of the new international Capitalism of the Oligarchs, and the bedpost-notching of a sexual swashbuckler—set against the backdrop of the Wall Street collapse of 2008.
Roberto Costa has never had to work. Son of Salvador, a Providence bond trader–turned–CNBC talking head–turned, lately, investment bank CEO, Bobby drifts through Europe, in parallel and in competition with his feckless sister, Rachel. He is a charmer, a gifted linguist, tall and handsome in addition to rich, and he bounces from city to city, conquest to conquest, taking notes for an always-in-its-early-stages magnum opus he sees as part Pepys, part Sebald, part guide to comparative linguistics. Bobby and Rachel are gluttons for all things old European, and they have a spirited rivalry when it comes to collecting places and relics, especially Romanesque architecture. Both are circled by hangers-on, users; chief among these is their shameless, amusing con woman mother, who’s long since moved on from Salvador but not from the pursuit of his assets. The novel is lightly but deftly plotted; most of its joys have to do with bantering dialogue and with what Bobby calls his “Notebooks” project. His observations about history, culture, and especially language are great fun, and Barnhardt also excels, in the son’s affectionate interactions with his father, at illustrating and glossing the 2008 crisis and the greed and skulduggery that caused it. (The Henry Miller part of all this, detailing the sexcapades of our blood flow–challenged hero, pale by comparison.) About two-thirds through, several swift, cleverly deployed plot devices put Bobby in possession of significant new resources, significant new moral ambiguities, and at last, nearing 40, in vague pursuit of a coming-of-age. The novel begins to morph into the one genre its man-child protagonist has never wanted any part of.
A likable, smart, wide-ranging ramble, good fun for those who like novels not aimless but a little aim-resistant.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781250090003
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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
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
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