A genial protagonist will keep readers enticed throughout this amusing romp.
A comic novel focuses on a dying language and the last chance to save it.
In this tale, Gardner presents Leonard Thorson, an assistant professor at a “fourth-rate” school called Ghurkin College. Ghurkin, whose mascot is a gerbil, is not exactly known for excellence in anything. Thanks to a corrupt dean, the school nevertheless boasts a grand football stadium. Lenny is a linguist who teaches French, lives in an apartment that used to be a rotating restaurant (that still occasionally revolves), and loves nothing more than diving deep into etymology. Lenny also works on a project with an Army veteran named Charlie. Charlie is said to be the last living speaker of a language called Skalwegian that comes from the now vacant island of Skalvik, located some 80 miles north of Norway. The two men hope to preserve the language, which is in danger of being lost forever. But Lenny soon learns that Charlie’s project is not quite on the altruistic level he was led to believe. It also doesn’t help that professional hit men are actively trying to assassinate Lenny. Or that many on campus hate Lenny for flunking two football players who never went to class. This wacky tale comes straight from left field. A nice-guy linguist who lives in a former restaurant and fails to realize that people are trying to kill him is unlike most heroes readers would expect to encounter. But the setup works. When Lenny is not providing the background on a word like idiot (“descended through middle English from the Old French word idiote,” readers are told), he is accidentally fending off assassins and wooing a sexy TV broadcaster. But even for such a fanciful tale, some aspects stretch credulity. The dean, for one, is so woefully incompetent that he runs afoul of a bad guy named Luther Skammer. (Yes, Skammer.) Still, Lenny is the type of hero worth rooting for. Tough but not arrogant, smart but not stuffy, he will stir readers’ curiosity, making them wonder where his rollicking adventure will ultimately land him.
A genial protagonist will keep readers enticed throughout this amusing romp.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
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
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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