A slow-paced and ultimately affecting fictional chronicle of two people living with special companions.
A man reflects on his marriage and a cat and teddy bear who enlivened it in Gould’s novel.
Don tells the story of how his live-in relationship with a woman named Gloria was affected by the addition of a cat named Alec to their lives. (The story is framed as Don telling the tale to four kittens in the present day.) Don wanted to make Gloria happy, but he was a dog person and laid down strict rules: If Alec started destroying the furniture or soiling the floor, she’d be on the first car ride back to Gloria’s farmhouse. The couple were enjoying their shared life: “After three marriages between us consisting of three children—all girls, three dogs and multiple inside and outside cats, we had finally crossed the bridge to realizing our dream,” Don notes. “The dream of spending our life together.” The addition of a pet adds unknown variables to that dream, but Don and Alec gradually get to know each other and learn each other’s routines. Alec seems preternaturally sensitive to the humans around her, and she adjusts to house living with speed and grace. Soon, comfortable, shared activities develop. “Alec would follow me into the office, and we would begin our ritual of her and me clawing at the scratching post for wisdom,” Don relates. As the narrative progresses, Alec forms a relationship with a teddy bear, Ted-D, and both are so vivid in their behaviors and personalities that Don begins to hear their speech, both to him and to each other.
The narrative gently and accurately depicts the slow and seemingly magical ways that pets can insinuate themselves into the lives of humans. The manner in which Gould has Don anthropomorphize both Alec and Ted-D is consistently touching and will doubtless strike a chord with the cat owners who are the book’s natural audience. The story shifts very comfortably from quotidian household details and family affairs to deeper philosophical considerations, as when a chat with Alec moves quickly from the surprise revelation that all cats can read to the question of the “nine lives” cats have: “What number life am I on? It does not matter to you, nor to me,” Alec tells Don. “It only matters that we enjoy life as we do. With one another, with love.” The text itself is conversational and unadorned in style, written in a realistic tone, as if having discussions with cats were an everyday occurrence. Gould effectively crafts Don and Gloria as ordinary, likable people, and this works well in contrasting their daily activities with the expanded worldview that they come to know through their interactions with Alec and Ted-D. The deliberate passage of time is rendered in straightforward, natural way, and the events of the book’s final act, which will be familiar to aficionados of pet-centered books, are handled with care and pathos that many readers will be sure to appreciate.
A slow-paced and ultimately affecting fictional chronicle of two people living with special companions.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7364564-2-2
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Jumping Cat Publications
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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