Thought-provoking, textured, and touching.
Probst’s novel charts the complicated life of a woman across the decades.
Arden Rice and fellow schoolteacher Robert travel through Europe to Istanbul by train in 1977. Arden is 24 years old and thinks her “own story is the only one that matters.” (It’s a mantra that continues throughout her life.) Budget-obsessed Robert bores her; she takes on other lovers abroad and upon her return to New York. When she discovers she’s pregnant and that Robert is the father, she convinces Jonah, her current squeeze, that he is the responsible party, and they marry. But when money gets tight (she discovers that Jonah stashes unpaid bills under their bed), an angry Arden upends the marriage and breaks her husband’s heart by telling him he’s not the biological father of their daughter Leigh. Husband number two is older and wealthy—that marriage is also short-lived due to the damage Arden inflicts. Her third husband, however, is a keeper, and for over 20 years and he and Arden live in “a ridiculously oversized apartment on Riverside Drive.” The morning of her 60th birthday, Arden assumes she will be feted by her husband, daughter, and 10-year-old grandchild. Arden feels she survived six decades through a combination of luck, agility, and bullishness— “keeping her eyes straight ahead, ignoring the debris.” But her good fortune runs out that day, leaving her with much soul-searching to do. If the devil is in the details, Probst is diabolically good: As a teacher in the 1970s, Arden hands out “freshly-mimeographed copies of the syllabus,” and as a young mom, she has “a cassette player on the counter made of child-friendly red and yellow plastic.” Characters are richly drawn, exotic locations are artfully described, and the language is fresh and sometimes poetic. The narrative may have worked better had it followed a more linear path, but the story still offers much to chew over, including explorations of the role of motherhood, the need for forgiveness, and the power of memory.
Thought-provoking, textured, and touching.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
