Dorn may have written the horror novel we deserve.
In Dorn’s pulse-quickening debut novel, an LA lawyer–turned-rapper finds herself thrust into the spotlight and its attendant chaos.
“I’m a Virgo so I don’t take perfection lightly,” exclaims 30-year-old Prue Van Teesen, the misguided heroine of Dorn’s story. Living in Los Angeles—a sun-bleached land of egos, fame, and vanity—doesn’t make things easier. In pursuit of a more meaningful life, Prue decides to quit her antidepressants cold turkey, take a pause from her law profession, and instead focus on what matters: turning her talent for spitting lyrics into a rap career and “thriving.” When Prue’s girlfriend introduces her to music producer Jax Jameson, a human disco ball of manic talent and cocaine-fueled good times, they instantly “vibe,” and she’s soon enmeshed in his “Kingdom” of so-called creatives. During what feels like a fever dream of Adderall and various uppers, Prue records her first song under the stage name Vagablonde, starts a rap group called Shiny AF, and makes a number of ethically dubious decisions—like letting one of her law clients join the never-ending party. As Shiny AF catapults to stardom, Prue spins out of control, losing not just her girlfriend in the process, but herself as well. A tumultuous ride of emotional highs and lows (do yourself a favor and don’t read this in one sitting), Dorn’s narrative is intoxicating, particularly in its depiction of the existential ennui that’s stemmed from our insatiable consumer culture. In a music scene where self-commodification and virality reign, Prue’s validation no longer comes from her peers, but instead from her growing internet presence. Every morning she repeatedly refreshes her Twitter homepage, each time to more followers, feeling less in touch with the world the higher she rises.
Dorn may have written the horror novel we deserve.Pub Date: May 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951213-00-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Powerfully affecting and disturbing.
A young man dying of AIDS returns to his Ohio hometown, where people think homosexuality is a sin and the disease is divine punishment.
Brian left Chester when he was 18, seeking freedom to be who he was in New York City. Now, in 1986, he’s 24, his partner and virtually all of their friends are dead, and he’s moving into the disease’s late stages. “He turned his back on his family to live a life of sin and he’s sick because of it,” thinks his mother, Sharon; nonetheless she says yes when Brian asks if he can come home after years of estrangement. His father, Travis, insists they must keep Brian’s illness and sexuality a secret; he makes Sharon set aside tableware and bedclothes exclusively for their son and wash them separately wearing gloves. Sickels (The Evening Hour, 2012) doesn’t gloss over the shame Brian’s family feels nor the astonishing cruelty of their friends and neighbors when word gets out. Brian’s ejection from the local swimming pool is the first in a series of increasingly ugly incidents: vicious phone calls, hate mail to the local newspapers, graffiti on the family garage, a gunshot through the windshield of his father’s car. Grandmother Lettie is Brian’s only open defender, refusing to speak to friends who ostracize him and boycotting the diner that denied him service. Younger sister Jess, taunted at school, wishes he’d never come home and tells him so. This unvarnished portrait of what people are capable of when gripped by ignorance and fear is relieved slightly by a few cracks in the facade of the town’s intolerance, some moments of kindness or at least faint regret as Brian’s health worsens over the summer and fall. Sharon and Travis both eventually acknowledge they have failed their son; she makes some amends while he can only grieve. Sickels’ characters are painfully flawed and wholly, believably human in their failings. This unflinching honesty, conveyed in finely crafted prose, makes for a memorable and unsettling novel.
Powerfully affecting and disturbing.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-938235-62-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hub City Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Ng's emotionally complex debut novel sucks you in like a strong current and holds you fast until its final secrets surface.
Ng's nuanced debut novel begins with the death of a teenage girl and then uses the mysterious circumstances of her drowning as a springboard to dive into the troubled waters beneath the calm surface of her Chinese-American family.
When 16-year-old Lydia Lee fails to show up at breakfast one spring morning in 1977, and her body is later dragged from the lake in the Ohio college town where she and her biracial family don't quite fit in, her parents—blonde homemaker Marilyn and Chinese-American history professor James—older brother and younger sister get swept into the churning emotional conflicts and currents they've long sought to evade. What, or who, compelled Lydia—a promising student who could often be heard chatting happily on the phone; was doted on by her parents; and enjoyed an especially close relationship with her Harvard-bound brother, Nath—to slip away from home and venture out in a rowboat late at night when she had always been deathly afraid of water, refusing to learn to swim? The surprising answers lie deep beneath the surface, and Ng, whose stories have won awards including the Pushcart Prize, keeps an admirable grip on the narrative's many strands as she expertly explores and exposes the Lee family's secrets: the dreams that have given way to disappointment; the unspoken insecurities, betrayals and yearnings; the myriad ways the Lees have failed to understand one another and, perhaps, themselves. These long-hidden, quietly explosive truths, weighted by issues of race and gender, slowly bubble to the surface of Ng's sensitive, absorbing novel and reverberate long after its final page.
Ng's emotionally complex debut novel sucks you in like a strong current and holds you fast until its final secrets surface.Pub Date: June 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59420-571-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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