An immensely satisfying trilogy finale examining marriage, forgiveness, race, youth, and university life.
A Massachusetts college instructor continues to grapple with a complicated academic life and a messy marriage in this novel.
This final installment of Senturia’s Martin Quint trilogy finds the professor facing exhausting years at Bottlesworth College after a scandal that forced him to leave Cambridge Technology Institute. Then there is his deteriorating marriage to his wife, Jenny, who, despite her indiscretion with a work subordinate, still feels as “stuck” as she did when their problems began in the author’s series debut, One Man’s Purpose (2015). In an effort to reconnect, the couple have embarked on marriage counseling sessions, which are effectively dispersed throughout the book. As Martin and Jenny work on repairing their marriage, healing distrust, and exploring past triggers, critical outside events complicate things further. When Andrew, Martin’s son from his first marriage, tells him that his soccer buddy, new Black student Lavelle Walton, is being bullied by aggressive, rich White kid Lester Worthington, the professor becomes concerned the harassment is racially motivated. After discovering that Lester is the son of a Maine state government official, Martin and Andrew learn that things are continuing to escalate. A group of students targeting Lavelle and organized by Lester becomes incensed by the athlete’s presence in school and on the soccer field and leaves a threatening noose on his dorm room doorknob. Meanwhile, in an effort to reclaim his lost childhood from a mother who abandoned him, Martin sets out to find her in a journey that becomes surprisingly suspenseful and emotionally moving.
Adding texture to the narrative is Martin’s passionate advocacy for the modernization and advancement of educational philosophies, including the practice of vocal participation and peer-to-peer learning curriculums in the tech classroom. Senturia, a veteran engineering professor, sets his novel in pre–Covid-19 academia where classrooms are still in-person. The exchanges between instructors and students are realistically portrayed, avoiding what the author calls in his introduction “Zoom fatigue.” While Martin’s dialogue periodically gets muddled in the jargon of a seasoned engineering academic eager for new and adventurous avenues of improved learning, he does impart objectives that will make sense to any reader. For example, he encourages new teaching methodologies, asserting that “conversation, two-way conversation, as opposed to just reading, engages one’s entire cognitive structure and opens it up to new ideas in a remarkable way.” Branching outward, the tale also explores the nuances of infidelity and a marriage’s recovery, race-baiting among adolescents, the unique teacher-student dynamic, and the enduring psychological effects of child abandonment on an adult. As several story arcs coalesce in the final third, the volume does begin to sag beneath the weight of the pivotal subject matter it addresses. While Senturia effectively touches on several areas of the modern human condition, readers will naturally gravitate back to the core story of Martin and Jenny rebuilding their relationship with the aid of a therapist. The durability of a bruised marriage navigating the emotional fallout of betrayal is the true beating heart of the author’s engrossing trilogy. Though Senturia leaves things on a positive, upbeat note, readers will yearn for more solid conclusions about the fate of this couple on the road to marital recovery.
An immensely satisfying trilogy finale examining marriage, forgiveness, race, youth, and university life.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-03-912358-8
Page Count: 294
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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