A good place to begin finding out why Everett has such a devoted cult.
A deadpan spoof of international thrillers, complete with a megalomaniacal supervillain, a killer robot, a damsel in distress, and math problems.
One never knows what to expect from Everett, whose prolific fictional output over the last four decades includes Westerns (God’s Country, 1994), crime novels (Assumption, 2011), variations on Greek mythology (Frenzy, 1997), and inquiries into African American identity (I Am Not Sidney Poitier, 2009). This time, Everett brings his mordant wit, philosophic inclinations, and narrative mischief to the suspense genre, going so far as to appropriate the title of an Ian Fleming thriller. Its nonplussed hero/narrator is a mathematics professor at Brown University who calls himself Wala Kitu. It turns out he’s the grown-up version of Ralph Townsend, the genius child in Everett’s novel Glyph (1999), who retains everything while determined to say nothing. Indeed, “nothing” is the recurring theme (or joke) of Everett’s latest, beginning with its title and continuing with the meaning of both Wala (nothing in Tagalog) and Kitu (nothing in Swahili). “Nothing” also appears to be the major objective of one John Milton Bradley Sill, a “slightly racially ambiguous” self-made billionaire who declares to Wala his ambition to be a Bond villain, “the sort of perpetrator of evil deeds that might cause the prime minister to dispatch a double-naught spy.” John Sill offers Wala a hefty sum ($3 million) to help him rob Fort Knox just as the eponymous baddie of Fleming’s Goldfinger tried to do. Wala’s not sure whether Sill’s joking or not. But the money’s big enough to compel him to tag along as Sill goes through the motions of being a supervillain, stopping along the way in places like Miami, Corsica, Washington, D.C., and, eventually, Kentucky. Wala’s accompanied throughout by his faithful one-legged bulldog, Trigo, and a math department colleague named Eigen, who at times seems to be literally under Sill’s spell but is almost as vexed by the nefarious goings-on as Wala. Being stalked throughout by Gloria, a comely, deadly Black android with an on-again, off-again Afro, doesn’t ease their anxieties. Everett is adroit at ramping up the tension while sustaining his narrator’s droll patter and injecting well-timed ontological discourses on...well…nothing. It may not sound like anything much, so to speak. But then, neither did all those episodes of Seinfeld that insisted they were about nothing. And this, too, is just as funny, if in a far different, more metaphysical manner.
A good place to begin finding out why Everett has such a devoted cult.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64445-208-0
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
