A well-imagined allegory of divisive racial politics.
A Latine mom struggles to maintain her perch in a society determined to undermine her.
The title of Skyhorse’s second novel is a lie: The real name of the narrator, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, is Inés. But ever since a schoolteacher struggled to pronounce that correctly, she’s been Iris, which is just one in a series of microaggressions she’s spent a lifetime shrugging off. She’s led a life that in the early chapters appears to have the makings of a standard-issue novel of American family dysfunction: She’s middle-class, newly separated, and raising a 9-year-old daughter, Mel, in a new home in suburbia. But curious signs around town start promoting a “band” that people are asked to wear on their wrists; one day a stone wall appears in her front yard, which only she and Mel can see. From there, Skyhorse spins an extended allegory not just around just how much White America is eager to disenfranchise immigrants—the bands are ID badges available only to people with at least one U.S.–born parent; the wall speaks for itself—but how immigrants often live in denial about the contempt they face. Skyhorse can be didactic on these points: Iris’ sister, Serena, appears in the story mainly to deliver tough-love lectures about her cultural blindness (“I didn’t major in whiteness in college como tú”). But the eeriness of the mysterious wall and ever intensifying groupthink vibe give the book an unnerving Stepford Wives quality, and Skyhorse’s satirical eye is sharp, from unctuous service workers (“Have a mindful day!”) to the cruelty of law enforcement officers’ just-following-orders ethos. Skyhorse doesn’t quite untangle the mysteries he sets up, but he cultivates an engrossing Kafkaesque atmosphere across the novel.
A well-imagined allegory of divisive racial politics.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781982177850
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
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