A sprightly, digressive, intriguing fandango on life and time.
Christmas 2016 is a time of memory and confrontation for two estranged sisters in this second installment of the British author’s Seasonal Quartet.
When Arthur arrives from London at his mother’s Cornwall mansion on Christmas Eve, he's with Lux, a lesbian from Croatia he's paying to pretend to be the girlfriend he told Mom he would be bringing. He's recently broken up with his actual paramour, who's posting embarrassing tweets about his blog, Art in Nature (one of these tweets will culminate in a busload of bird-watchers arriving at the mansion on Boxing Day). His mother, Sophia, has almost no food in her house, but Arthur calls her sister, Iris, who arrives with provisions, rather too easily ending almost three decades of silence between the siblings. Over the course of three days, the older women will revisit the sources of their antipathy—personalities, political leanings, lifestyle choices—and rediscover the affection that still waits beneath unforgotten grievances. The writing seems deceptively informal, with a few glimpses of stunning prose. The narrative can be challenging, as it veers in many directions the way memory serves up fragments unbidden, often funny, sometimes wistful, suggesting a garrulous old friend riffing on a gripe or sharing an anecdote. Smith (Autumn, 2016, etc.) knits together the present-time narrative and many flashbacks to reveal secrets, ironies, old loves, and the unfolding lives enriched by them. She embarked in 2016 on a sequence of four novels, each named after a season. Though the first two can be read separately, Smith has also forged intriguing links between them from history and current events, including fences and protests, female visual artists, and the fallout from Brexit.
A sprightly, digressive, intriguing fandango on life and time.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-241-20702-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
PERSPECTIVES
Spielman’s debut charms as Brett briskly careens from catastrophe to disaster to enlightenment.
Devastated by her mother’s death, Brett Bohlinger consumes a bottle of outrageously expensive Champagne and trips down the stairs at the funeral luncheon. Add embarrassed to devastated. Could things get any worse? Of course they can, and they do—at the reading of the will.
Instead of inheriting the position of CEO at the family’s cosmetics firm—a position she has been groomed for—she’s given a life list she wrote when she was 14 and an ultimatum: Complete the goals, or lose her inheritance. Luckily, her mother, Elizabeth, has crossed off some of the more whimsical goals, including running with the bulls—too risky! Having a child, buying a horse, building a relationship with her (dead) father, however, all remain. Brad, the handsome attorney charged with making sure Brett achieves her goals, doles out a letter from her mother with each success. Warmly comforting, Elizabeth’s letters uncannily—and quite humorously—predict Brett’s side of the conversations. Brett grudgingly begins by performing at a local comedy club, an experience that proves both humiliating and instructive: Perfection is overrated, and taking risks is exhilarating. Becoming an awesome teacher, however, seems impossible given her utter lack of classroom management skills. Teaching homebound children offers surprising rewards, though. Along Brett’s journey, many of the friends (and family) she thought would support her instead betray her. Luckily, Brett’s new life is populated with quirky, sharply drawn characters, including a pregnant high school student living in a homeless shelter, a psychiatrist with plenty of time to chat about troubled children, and one of her mother’s dearest, most secret companions. A 10-step program for the grief-stricken, Brett’s quest brings her back to love, the best inheritance of all.
Spielman’s debut charms as Brett briskly careens from catastrophe to disaster to enlightenment.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-54087-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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