In this razor-sharp debut, grief and loathing beget a juicy tragicomedy.
One woman juggles the five stages of grief in this novel’s cutting portrait of a marriage’s slow-motion deterioration.
Twenty-nine-year-old, 6-foot-tall Magdalena de la Cruz (nee Jablonowski) mourns the death of her “Polish twin” brother, Junah; they were born 19 months apart, though they were nearly identical. A Northern California viticulturist turned water mogul, Magda begins her story while desperately treading water in the Pacific Ocean after falling overboard. After Junah’s death, she explains, she’s done everything to “rebirth herself”: moving to LA and erasing the many physical similarities she shared with her brother. She’s been Lasiked, Jeuvedermed and Botoxed; pumped with saline, small white pills and gin—everything “short of a corneal transplant.” Yet nothing brings her closer to Ricky, her overcommitted (possibly unfaithful) husband, or to the acceptance of grief, as her psychiatrist advises. Magda agrees to see “the Shrink”—a female therapist “highly recommended by Eric Clapton’s personal assistant”—only because it gives her 45 minutes of alone time with Ricky in rush-hour traffic. As they drive their tanklike Mercedes home from “Lynda Carter’s Hillary for President Beach Bonfire and Benefit in Malibu,” Ricky stops in “the dead middle of Sunset” and violently takes her, as drivers honk, scream and drive around them. Despite the blood, bruising and noise, Magda feels nothing. Instead, she sets out to discover what it’s like to be unfaithful, hooking up with Quentin, a tattooed rock-star wannabe. After the “third worst day” of her life, when she realizes “infidelity wasn’t fun,” Magda returns to her hometown to rediscover the beauty of a place that also smells like cow manure. She seeks solace in art, eventually making a larger-than-life self-portrait out of rhinestones. Prone to embellishment, melodrama and laugh-out-loud set pieces, Magda isn’t an unreliable narrator, even though she admits to being “inconsistent.” Hoida gives her a sure and steady voice, full of caustic wit and raw emotion. With bright similes and shining epigrams, she gleefully mines Tinseltown tropes while skewering class, consumerism and body image. Revelations are punctuated with punch lines that land squarely in the gut. Although the ending is abrupt, it’s as clever as the rest of the book. Best of all, it leaves hope that readers haven’t seen the end of Magda.
In this razor-sharp debut, grief and loathing beget a juicy tragicomedy.Pub Date: June 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-0985129439
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Lettered Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The gripping pursuit and protection of the love of a lifetime.
The petrifying tale of a chain of reincarnations that can only be broken by finding true love.
Kim is a blind college student who’s in a relationship with her biology teacher. When they get engaged, he urges Kim to contact her estranged mother, Astra, a psychiatrist who didn’t come back after leaving Kim at a school for the blind when she was 6 years old. For Astra, having a child was a failed attempt to feel love—the only way for a Repeater to conclude his or her string of lives. Finding herself incapable of the emotion, Astra abandoned Kim; but over a decade later, Astra finds the motivation to monstrously destroy her life as part of their grisly mother–daughter rivalry. The destruction bleeds into 16-year-old Lucy’s life as well; she’s a new patient who’s been having blackouts and flashbacks from another life. Lucy doesn’t yet understand that she, too, is a Repeater. With prose so poetic, it’s easy to forget this is a horror story: One evil action collides with the next as a cursed Repeater ruthlessly seeks the true love she hasn’t yet found in the hundreds of lives she remembers—love that would finally end her streak of reincarnations. More than a battle of good and evil, Ferencik’s (Cracks in the Foundation, 2008) story is rich with layers, well-developed characters, and moments of gruesomeness and tenderness. The loveless malice contrasts sharply with characters—some Repeaters, some not—who feel love so deeply that they seem to glow from it on the page.
The gripping pursuit and protection of the love of a lifetime.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-0981574110
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Waking Dream Press
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A take on the future of the Earth that inspires further thought.
In this sci-fi–fantasy blend, Garvey imagines the end of the world as we know it and what might come next.
Amy Marksman has always been a little bit different: She can commune with the Earth and see the little green people who seem to share it with humans, as well as beings that just might be gods. Her role as garden tender for her village carries its own significance as well. Her uncanny ability to understand her environment and what it needs keeps her village healthy and fed. However, Amy doesn’t realize just how important she is until tragedy strikes. An army of marauders rolls into her village, allegedly looking for her, and leaves with her baby, Eliza. With a small group of fellow survivors, Amy sets out to rescue her daughter and learn how to stop the fog before it’s too late for the rest of the world. On her quest, she makes an amazing discovery: The world was once a much different place, where humans and technology functioned codependently. When something happened to wipe out all gadgets, however, many humans escaped into space, and the ones left behind in exile rebuilt the world as Amy knows it. She’ll have to learn about this strange world, the good and bad, and about what it left behind to truly understand her own powers and save everyone she loves. Clearly, there’s a lot going on here, and some plots or attempts at worldbuilding don’t get the attention they deserve. However, the world is an interesting one, and Amy makes a good central figure. With her powers, she functions as a bridge between the old world and the new, and Garvey does an excellent job showing how strong she is while also preventing her from using her abilities to their full extent.
A take on the future of the Earth that inspires further thought.Pub Date: April 22, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615634852
Page Count: 396
Publisher: garveybooks
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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