A thoughtful, engaging meditation on the intersection of artistic and spiritual integrity.
A successful but cynical and discontented artist gets a peculiar commission and a shot at moral redemption in this novel.
Martin Drake is a world-renowned artist, celebrated for his work as a sculptor of mostly abstract pieces. As a result of his fame, he leads a life of indulgent prodigality in New York City, one as luxurious as it is obscene and empty. But despite his acclaim, he’s disgusted with his own life and believes himself a fraud who abandoned his artistic principles for commercial accomplishments. At yet another winning exhibition, billionaire Harry Banks offers him a strange proposition. In exchange for a whopping $1 million, Martin must accept a commission to produce a sculpture of the face of God for Father Manoel da Silva Teixeira, a priest who is a “devoted crusader for the underclass” in Brazil. Father Manoel is horrified—he sees Martin’s art as profane trash, a soulless exercise in adolescent sacrilege. As offended as Martin is by Father Manoel’s assessment—one shared by Harry—the sculptor accepts the commission for the sake of the money. Brewer sensitively depicts the opportunity for moral and artistic reform this gives Martin as well as the daunting difficulty of the sculpture itself: “Trying to display all that God was, in one certain form, would be like trying to capture the sea in a teardrop, but infinitely more difficult. The most gifted visionary would fall far short. God was beyond comprehension.”
The author delicately limns Martin’s downward spiral into a life of ignoble dissipation, one marked by extraordinary self-debasement as well as the terrible loss of love. And Father Manoel is presented as much more than “a Bible-thumping Amazonian.” The priest astutely sees, under a surface of artistic debauchery, a deep reserve of genuine potential in Martin’s work: “They were grotesque, and clearly they were manifestations of an angry psyche straining for truth ever-further in the wrong direction. But there was something else to those bronzes: although they were ugly and malformed, they showed something more—a tremendous raw talent.” Still, Brewer’s story is far too condensed—under 250 pages—to have time to develop Martin’s reversal of character, a metamorphosis that is delivered too quickly and is therefore as implausible as his commission. Especially given the depths of Martin’s moral depravity—depths deftly, affectingly described by the author—readers are led to expect a tougher slog toward enlightenment. In addition, Brewer’s writing can mix florid overstatement with shopworn clichés. Consider this depiction of one of Martin’s sculptures: “Etched with the beauty and wisdom of the ages, glowing with a power beyond the realm of understanding, it was he himself that stared back.” Nevertheless, the author provides an intriguing critique of the contemporary art world—subsumed by money and careerism, it conflates the ostentatiously reprobate with edgy creativity. Furthermore, Brewer manages to pull off a difficult trick—he has composed a deeply religious novel that wears its spirituality lightly. While the book revolves around the redemptive powers promised by a submission to God, it avoids tendentious sermonizing.
A thoughtful, engaging meditation on the intersection of artistic and spiritual integrity.Pub Date: June 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-95-534788-4
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Goldtouch Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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