A refreshingly unorthodox tale of the challenges facing modern, lower-middle-class 20-somethings.
In this brief novel, a group of young friends in California struggle to make ends meet and manage their loneliness.
Luke is a college graduate who sometimes looks for a job teaching English, but for the most part, he meanders through life shiftlessly in El Camino Real. At the beginning of the story, he holds a low-paying job at a woodworking plant, but after he’s laid off, he follows the lead of his friend, Spencer, an aspiring chef, and picks up another low-paying position at a high-end restaurant. Luke’s girlfriend, Tanya, breaks up with him, kicks him out of the house, and later gets engaged to another man, dashing Luke’s hopes for a reunion. After a stint living with his parents, he rents a room in a Sunnyvale house with Marty and Spencer. Luke flirts easily and often with his friend Nita and forms a bond with her daughter, Kayla, but he’s uncertain whether a budding romance with Nita has a future. Meanwhile, Spencer’s girlfriend, Naomi, is serially unfaithful to him and obsessively flirts with other men, including Luke. Marty moves in with a new friend, Fredson, who turns out to be involved in the drug trade, and the police find a connection between him and Ben, Nita’s good-for-nothing ex-boyfriend and Kayla’s biological father. Author Riske (The Possibility of Snow, 2015, etc.) tells the story entirely from Luke’s perspective, relating it in the first person and in a somewhat impressionistic style; many of the chapters are little more than a few paragraphs delivering quirky observations or a poem. Overall, the author deftly captures the tension in Luke between a sanguine aimlessness and the deeper desire for a more purposeful life. The prose is delightfully eccentric at times (one chapter, entitled “Chump City,” contains only a single line: “I am the mayor of Chump City”), but Riske manages to weave a coherent narrative out of the novel’s sometimes-disjointed parts. That said, with the exception of Luke and Nita, the characters are often underdeveloped—more types than persons.
A refreshingly unorthodox tale of the challenges facing modern, lower-middle-class 20-somethings.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4956-2759-0
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Luminis
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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