A sensitive and sensual story of renewal that’s hampered somewhat by overexplanation.
Probst’s novel follows a career photographer as she revives her artistic and romantic passions in Iceland.
Cathryn McAllister, an American single mother of two grown children, has long sacrificed her art for the security of commercial photography and catered to her kids’ every whim. In dire need of a break, she seizes upon the opportunity to shoot a spread of photographs in the stunning Icelandic landscape, both as a crown jewel to her portfolio and as a chance to take some time for herself. She doesn’t expect to fall in love with the subject of her photos, the alluring glass blower Henry Malcolm “Mack” Charbonneau, but she soon finds herself abandoning her preplanned itinerary for the cramped, steamy quarters of a glass blowing hot shop in Akureyri. The heat of their mutual desire is tempered by Mack’s strange reticence to let Cathryn know him. She offers as little of her past as he does his, and the two exist in a liminal space of artistic exploration and intimate passion, untethered by the ties that bind them to their daily lives. Yet readers will feel the weight of Cathryn’s life pressing in, as each of her children calls in turn to complain of minute yet personally monumental crises. As her relationship with Mack unfolds, Cathryn realizes her own agency, suppressed for so long along with the traumas of her late husband’s infidelity and untimely death. Probst grapples with questions of the essence of art and the possibility of redemption in this novel and conveys some gorgeous and potent images along the way. However, some passages suffer from overwriting. For example, Mack’s stirring observation on glass blowing (“After all, what other art form requires the breath of its creator?”) is undercut by Cathryn’s gratuitous response (“That’s an extraordinary way to put it”). Metaphors and symbols are also laid bare and dissected. The author has a keen skill at crafting nuanced and textured relationships, but she brings less grace to the construction of the plot. Still, she delivers an often engaging narrative with an ending you won’t expect.
A sensitive and sensual story of renewal that’s hampered somewhat by overexplanation.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-259-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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