Probing, realistic stories of aging, learning, failing, and growing.
Polf tracks moments of personal change in this collection of literary short fiction.
A woman hires a Romanian caretaker for her mother, who is slipping into dementia, only to become jealous of the bond her mother forms with the charismatic immigrant. A man moves to 1960s San Francisco to become a writer and takes a job at the city zoo, which leads to a standoff between his primary literary (and romantic) rival and a pair of lions. A nervous boy spends an initiatory night hanging out with older teens, drinking booze and siphoning gasoline. (“He held the other end of the hose to his mouth with his thumb an inch from the end, just like he had learned, and began to suck, tentatively at first, then with more confidence. He could feel pressure at the other end of the hose; that should mean the gasoline was coming.”) A man inadvertently causes a car accident by stepping off a curb, though in the aftermath he can’t get anyone to appreciate the guilt he feels. Across 15 stories, Polf dramatizes everyday moments of crisis and transition, from a broken toilet that needs a plumber to a rainstorm that requires a mom to pick her son up from school. The author’s prose elevates the often-mundane problems in the stories to dramatic—and sometimes comedic—heights. Here, the man who causes the accident grasps for cosmological metaphors to explain it: “If he hadn’t stepped off the curb at precisely that moment, Miriam would have either already passed by or would not yet have arrived…It could be explained only in cosmic terms, Marlowe concluded, like the random chance of a particle splitting an atom and the ensuing explosion devastating everything.” Not every piece lands, and many of the tales would be improved if they pushed a bit deeper into their characters’ crises. The worlds are always richly drawn, however, and Polf proves himself a capable recorder of the human psyche.
Probing, realistic stories of aging, learning, failing, and growing.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9798891323377
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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