by Andrea Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 13, 2022
More superb work from an American master.
Henrietta Atkins and one Marburg sister return from Ship Fever (1996), Barrett’s National Book Award winner, in interlinked stories ranging across half a century.
Henrietta occupies center stage in the first three stories. “Wonders of the Shore” takes her to an island off the New Hampshire coast for an 1885 summer vacation with her friend Daphne. Barrett delicately contrasts Henrietta’s life as a high school biology teacher in Crooked Lake, her central New York hometown, with Daphne’s profitable career as a science writer and pseudonymous cookbook author; she plumbs the women’s complex relationship and provides a surprise ending that reveals Henrietta making an unexpected decision about herself and her future. In “The Regimental History,” she is a bright, inquisitive 10-year-old fascinated by the letters of a Union soldier, later learning of the soldier’s sad decline from his nephew, who’s one of her students. In fewer than 50 pages, Barrett considers the cost of war, the duplicity of leaders, and the nurturing bond between a young person and an inspired teacher. “Henrietta and Her Moths” also ranges through time to trace Henrietta’s efforts to help her sister, Hester, through pregnancy and motherhood and to provide a vivid glimpse of Henrietta’s ability to convey the excitement of scientific observation to her charges, including Caroline, her tempestuous niece. Caroline has become an aviator in “The Accident,” which captures both the joy of flight and the cruelty of class privilege with Barrett’s characteristic subtlety and cleareyed compassion. In “Open House,” another of Henrietta’s students faces a conflict that underpins the entire collection: The bonds that tie people to family and community are challenged by the ambition to find a place in the larger world. That theme becomes explicit in the title story, which finds Rose Marburg in 2018 reflecting on her choice to abandon scientific work that led others to a Nobel Prize. As always, Barrett depicts the natural world and the human heart with wonder, tenderness, and deep understanding.
More superb work from an American master.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-03519-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
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by Paula Hawkins ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 2024
This propulsive thriller twists into the dark and bloody underbelly of the world of fine art.
The discovery that a revered artist’s sculpture contains a human bone sets off scandal and violence.
Art historian James Becker has what seems like a sweet deal. He’s the curator of the collection of the Fairburn Foundation, housed at a stately home owned by the Lennox family: Sebastian, Becker’s best friend, and his bitter mother, Lady Emmeline. Becker’s wife, Helena, was Sebastian’s fiancee first, but they’re all very civilized about it and happily awaiting the birth of her baby. The centerpiece of the Fairburn collection is works by the late Vanessa Chapman, an artist about whom Becker wrote his thesis, and with whom he is somewhat obsessed. Partly, it’s because of her great talent, but she was also a glamorous figure, a beauty who, as she became successful, sequestered herself on an isolated Scottish tidal island called Eris. She had a dark side—lots of stormy relationships, plus a philandering mooch of a husband who vanished without a trace a few decades ago. Her reputation, though, has risen after her death—so much so that the Fairburn has loaned some of her works to the Tate Modern. That’s where a forensic anthropologist sees one of her sculptures, made of found objects that include what’s described as an animal bone. The scientist is sure the bone is human, and soon Becker finds himself scrambling to prevent scandal. Vanessa willed her works and papers to the foundation, but some of them are still on Eris, guarded by her longtime friend Grace Haswell. A retired doctor, Grace lived with Vanessa off and on over the years and nursed her through her fatal cancer. It was a surprise when Vanessa left her estate not to Grace but to Douglas Lennox, Emmeline’s husband and Sebastian’s father. Douglas was Vanessa’s gallerist and lover, but the two had a nasty falling-out. Sebastian is so frustrated by Grace’s refusal to turn over all of the bequest that he’s ready to sue her, but Becker believes he can negotiate, so off to the the island he goes. He finds far more treachery and shocking secrets than he expected, past and present alike. Hawkins keeps her cast tight, her wild setting ominous, and her plot moving fast.
This propulsive thriller twists into the dark and bloody underbelly of the world of fine art.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9780063396524
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 2024
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
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New York Times Bestseller
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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