Despite all the dire events, the narrative energy of masterfully interwoven plotlines always conveys a sense of life as an...
The title is decidedly sardonic, given the number of deaths and disasters Smiley inflicts on the Langdon family and kin in the final volume of her Last Hundred Years trilogy (Early Warning, 2015, etc.).
Nonetheless, “golden age” seems appropriate for the late-life reconciliation of Frank and Andy Langdon; it’s warmly affecting to see the remoteness Andy cultivated over decades of neglect slowly fade as Frank actually shares himself with her—until he’s struck by lightning at age 74. Several of his siblings meet less spectacular deaths as the story progresses year by year from 1987 through an imagined 2019, but autumnal musings by the survivors get no more space from this briskly unsentimental author than the maneuvers of the younger generations (a few of whom are somewhat schematically dispatched on 9/11 or scarred for life in the Iraq War). Frank and Andy’s son Michael remains as toxic as ever, engaging in ever shadier financial deals that make him one of many villains in the 2008 economic meltdown; his identical twin, Richie, strives to get some distance with a political career but can never entirely disengage from Michael's emotional force field. Their cousin Jesse, who inherited the family farm in Iowa, grapples with the havoc wrought by Monsanto’s genetically altered seeds, the impact of climate change on his crops, and the perennial financial insecurity of farmers, always in debt and vulnerable to predatory speculators like Michael. Newly introduced characters like Charlie (hitherto unknown son of a Langdon killed in Vietnam in Early Warning) and his girlfriend, Riley, militant political conscience of her boss, Richie, are welcome additions to Smiley’s vibrant gallery of fully fleshed characters, with Henry and Claire remaining the most ruefully appealing of the siblings we first met in Some Luck. The final chapters, which look a scant four years ahead and see nothing but ecological and political bad news, are almost comically bleak—let’s hope Smiley isn’t as skilled a fortuneteller as she is a storyteller.
Despite all the dire events, the narrative energy of masterfully interwoven plotlines always conveys a sense of life as an adventure worth pursuing.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-307-70034-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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