A collection that patiently renders emotional depth without recourse to angst or melodrama.
Ten stories that paint vivid characters in emotionally resonant moments.
The short stories in this collection often describe dramatic events—a cabin washed away; a boy dead in a fire—but they center subtleties of emotional life. Racial diversity isn’t explicit, and apart from mentions of a migrant family, character descriptions don’t suggest it. But the stories feature a welcome range of economic backgrounds: a wealthy father who uses his money to assuage a personal sense of guilt; a girl whose family can’t quite scrape together $1.50 for a plastic razor. Throughout the collection, we encounter characters through details that don’t coalesce into revelation or diagnosis. A mother’s fixation with divining rods sends her wandering canyons at night; she embraces trees because it “chases away bad thoughts”; and her knitting basket is full of unfinished projects. But we don’t know why she is like this, what a name for it might be. In the poignant final story, a woman struggles to reconcile everything she knows about her niece—her watchful demeanor, the way she picks at her food, the trouble she causes her parents—and comes up short. “Do you want to know where she was, what she was doing? (She will refuse to say.)” This willingness to describe without arriving at answers might frustrate readers accustomed to short stories that end with a flourish of insight or irony. But the achievement of these stories has more to do with emotional movement than a point of arrival. This approach creates a sense of depth and realism: These characters exist beyond the moments the text describes; their world is not restricted to a story arc.
A collection that patiently renders emotional depth without recourse to angst or melodrama.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781639550449
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.
A British widow travels to Ibiza and learns that it’s never too late to have a happy life.
In a world that seems to be getting more unstable by the moment, Haig’s novels are a steady ship in rough seas, offering a much-needed positive message. In works like the bestselling The Midnight Library (2020), he reminds us that finding out what you truly love and where you belong in the universe are the foundations of building a better existence. His latest book continues this upbeat messaging, albeit in a somewhat repetitive and facile way. Retired British schoolteacher Grace Winters discovers that an old acquaintance has died and left her a ramshackle home in Ibiza. A widow who lost her only child years earlier, Grace is at first reluctant to visit the house, because, at 72, she more or less believes her chance for happiness is over—but when she rouses herself to travel to the island, she discovers the opposite is true. A mystery surrounds her friend’s death involving a roguish islander, his activist daughter, an internationally famous DJ, and a strange glow in the sea that acts as a powerful life force and upends Grace’s ideas of how the cosmos works. Framed as a response to a former student’s email, the narrative follows Grace’s journey from skeptic (she was a math teacher, after all) to believer in the possibility of magic as she learns to move on from the past. Her transformation is the book’s main conflict, aside from a protest against an evil developer intent on destroying Ibiza’s natural beauty. The outcome is never in doubt, and though the story often feels stretched to the limit—this novel could have easily been a novella—the author’s insistence on the power of connection to change lives comes through loud and clear.
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593489277
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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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