An entertaining, challenging read that may appeal mainly to Lethem fans and scholars.
The award-winning Lethem makes a puzzling return to the scene of an earlier novel.
The title of Lethem’s 13th novel stirs memories of his comic-noir treasure, Motherless Brooklyn (1999), but the clear antecedent here is The Fortress of Solitude (2003); the new book stands as a kind of sociological survey of the urban street life that underpinned Fortress. The crimes involved stem largely from a real estate revolution starting in the 1960s that transformed run-down parts of Brooklyn into desirable residential areas. Lethem focuses on the same Dean Street that featured in Fortress. The narrator, who is from the neighborhood, cites the white “pioneers” who venture into mainly Black areas and renovate old buildings. With vague thoughts of fostering integration, they end up forcing their school-age boys—girls and women are scarce here—to endure getting their pocket money regularly stolen by Black youths from nearby housing projects, an intricate ritual called “yoking” in Fortress and here termed “the dance.” The book consists of brief chapters with recurring characters, like the two boys who cut up quarters in a funny scheme that won’t be resolved for hundreds of pages. Much of the narrative touches on youthful pastimes and traumas, from muggings to skateboards to graffiti, Spaldeens, shoplifting, and sex. The crimes range from actual ones, like theft and rape, but also implicated are poor parenting and property inflation along with the nabe-jolting sins of gentrification. The title notwithstanding, the book is at best an interesting alternative to a conventional novel. Maybe, with its dizzying array of local color, it’s a memoir gone rogue, as is a lot of fiction. The narrator says "it is about what a small number of people remember” and how that knowledge “wishes and doesn’t wish to come out.” When it does, it's Fortress, or it's this.
An entertaining, challenging read that may appeal mainly to Lethem fans and scholars.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780062938824
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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