At once a testament to and a caution against “the despairing human’s capacity for ingenuity.”
After Eleutheria (2022), Hyde returns to the climate crisis with a collection of short stories that jump between dystopias and parallel universes, seamlessly blending humor and tragedy.
The book's dedication—“For who we’ll be”—immediately signposts its fundamental concern: The way humankind (and more specifically, Americans) will navigate an increasingly inhospitable climate. There’s a sublime, filmic quality to the stories, in which Hyde expertly inverts the familiar. A swarm of caravans roam America, artists are kept in glass enclosures, and rehab facilities treat digital disorders. Hyde’s preoccupation with material (duct tape, tar, fiberglass) and endless references to environmental collapse (glacial melt, phosphorus runoff, extinction) don’t hinder the stories’ unrelenting pace. Indeed, it is within the quotidian that she gestures toward the West's soporific response to the climate crisis. While the pilgrimaging caravaners of “Mobilization” obsess over refueling—dwindling resources are “probably a localized issue”—the reader grows agitated by their self-necrotizing, reckless consumption. The quintessential freedom of the American dream is continually exposed as an impossibility, the pursuit of which is entirely bound to the systems of capitalism and colonialism. In “The Future Is a Click Away,” paying for the automated convenience of “individualized commodity distribution” destroys the finances and mental wellbeing of entire communities, highlighting the impossibility of consumer free will. In the subterranean village of “The Eaters,” a celebrated historian observes that “our planet evolved on the premise of interdependence, yet human beings have insisted upon exceptionalism. No system can save us.” The gender dynamics of heteronormative relationships are skewered in “Loving Homes for Lost & Broken Men,” and the fetishization of youth is exposed as essentially grotesque in “Democracy in America.” For Hyde, the U.S. is the “paradise no one could truly enter.” We're invited along on an often bizarre ride in which we see the ridiculousness of our own world reflected back at us, with Hyde managing to stress the urgency of the climate catastrophe without lecturing us.
At once a testament to and a caution against “the despairing human’s capacity for ingenuity.”Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780593315262
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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