An ambitious but erratic portrayal of a society gone wrong with no resolution in sight.
In the midst of a potential social revolution, a husband and wife on the downside of a bad marriage find themselves at odds.
Here we find a perhaps-prescient tale of murder and deceit set during a political upheaval in the near-future United States. There are hints of events to come, with drone deliveries and social uprisings as well as a critical plot involving the potential passing of a bill authorizing a universal basic income for all Americans. The two critical players are Michael Mixner, a Wall Street trader fallen dangerously into debt, and his wife, Wendy, a marketing guru soldiering on despite PTSD from a recent stillbirth. This marriage between a drug-addled former hip-hop artist–turned-trader and an anxiety-ridden marketing whiz is crumbling, but so is the community around them. The pivotal event comes when Michael’s best friend, a wealthy gay activist named Ricky, is shot to death after violent protestors interrupt the party of some wealthy elites. It’s not a mystery—Wilson calls out the killer in plain sight but wraps the drama in a web of familial deceit, societal dismay, and economic inequality that renders no one innocent. The nexus is Michael’s plot to get rich via a scheme involving a cryptocurrency in a virtual reality game that just happens to be the brainchild of his wife’s new client. Wendy has been hired to launch a stealth campaign dubbed Project Pinky, designed to derail the UBI bill. The narrative is dripping with drama, not least due to Wendy’s unapologetic seizure of her own fate in the wake of Michael’s recklessness. Wilson creates a deft juxtaposition of contemporary American classes on par with Richard Price's Lush Life, but whether readers approach it as a flawed crime drama or a satire of American inequality, they may find that implausible plot threads and unanswered questions leave them dissatisfied with the experience.
An ambitious but erratic portrayal of a society gone wrong with no resolution in sight.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64129-165-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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