A quixotic exploration of the recent past that reveals something far deeper about how we will remember the future.
Friends talk their way through the 24-hour news cycle during what turns out to be an inflection point in history.
It’s June 2016. A group of friends gather in the courtyard of a New York City bar to discuss their days, their dates, their philosophies of art and life. In November there will be an election whose consequences can’t quite be imagined yet. The Brexit vote goes through in England. In Minnesota, Philando Castile is shot to death at a traffic stop by police. As a cohesive book, this novella resists definition—both in terms of its construction and its central energy. The friends break into the day-by-day, diaristic format of the narrative—which includes shopping lists, the plots of movies, and the news of the day with equal import—to tell their own stories of chance encounters, overheard conversations, or personal epiphanies. In San Francisco, John, the curator of these many narrations, goes on a quest to locate the studio where Neil Young recorded the soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man for no reason other than to see if he can. In a philosophical throughline, multiple characters bemoan the loss of the analog experience. Speaking again of Young—specifically his habit of working out early drafts of songs live onstage in the pre-YouTube era—one of the friends says, “A form of life, of artistic practice, that required the presence of other people is no longer possible; the audience is no longer able to be there as people, only devices, recording and comparing.” Whether or not this may be true for Neil Young fans, it does not feel true for readers of this book, who wash in and out of the flood of images conjured by John and his friends only to come up hard against the immutable fact of a headline that both binds us to the experience through shared history and underscores the privilege of hindsight. While some readers may search for a point among all this overlaid ephemera, Searls’ insistent return to the moments when analog experiences interrupt the forward momentum of events—a girl taking a surreptitious photo on the train, lizards on a hiking path startled by lightning—show that the book’s real interest lies in the ordinary power of sensation, rather than the flashbulb sensationalism of event.
A quixotic exploration of the recent past that reveals something far deeper about how we will remember the future.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781566897396
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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