Come for the Applebee’s-sponsored rehearsal dinner and stay for the extended journey of a goat into the next life.
In rural Louisiana, a conservative Christian mom tries to get her mind around hosting the fabulous nuptials required by her son’s marriage.
It’s a long way from New Orleans to the Polite Society Ranch, where Chrissy Durang is getting through one more school bus full of little field trippers as she awaits the arrival of her adored son, Barnett, who’s returning, she’s sure, to take the reins of the old homestead. But to her unhappy surprise, Barnett is not coming to assume responsibility for the blind chicken, the alpaca with alopecia, and the beloved dying goat, Elaine (who will be buried near her late compadres, Seinfeld, Kramer, and George). Instead, he’s coming to announce that he’s getting married, and he has fiance Ezra on his arm. The story spirals from there in two directions. In the hilarious one, Ezra’s mother, Victoria, “the alcoholic’s alcoholic, the silver-tongued complainer who only flies first-class,” and event-planner sister, Nichole, show up to organize the blessed event, planning to transform the farm into “a modern gay wonderland” with a gazebo, a brigade of fireflies, rainbow-sashed valet parkers, and more—though no separate chef for the animals, Nichole pouts, “because that guy turned out to be a fictional character from a New Yorker article I misread.” In a more serious aspect of the plot, highlighted by chapter headings that give the “Countdown to Damnation,” rigid Chrissy is unable to accept her son’s sexuality, his partner, or his plans—until finally, the virulent homophobia of her neighbors awakens a protective response. Actually, the opening of Chrissy’s mind begins when she eats several foil-wrapped packages of chocolate she finds in Ezra’s luggage that turn out to be infused with magic mushrooms. Lane's sophomore effort is over-the-top in so many clashing ways—like Schitt’s Creek meets The Laramie Project—but simpatico readers will likely throw reservations to the wind and go all in.
Come for the Applebee’s-sponsored rehearsal dinner and stay for the extended journey of a goat into the next life.Pub Date: May 30, 2023
ISBN: 9781250267146
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Catnip for anyone who ever wished they could walk around in their favorite book.
A young woman goes on an epic adventure while living out every book lover’s dream.
“All stories are love stories if you love stories,” and Rainy March, a 27-year-old woman living in picturesque Fort Meriwether, Oregon, certainly loves stories. Rainy’s love of literature goes beyond the surface—literally. In her job as a Book Witch, Rainy has the ability to step inside novels with the aid of her magical black umbrella and her feline familiar, Koshka. Rainy’s job, along with the other members of the Ink and Paper Coven including her grandfather, is to save stories from being destroyed by so-called Burners—conservative villains who hop into books to kill off main characters from stories they find offensive to their traditional values—or from fictional characters who accidentally wander into the real world. Rainy’s life is a little more complicated than that of your average Book Witch, however—once, on a mission, she stepped into a Duke of Chicago detective novel and fell in love with the titular Duke. Unfortunately, it’s forbidden for a Book Witch to fall in love with a fictional character lest their love end up in the novel and the canon be changed forever. But then Rainy’s grandfather goes missing on a Book Witch mission, and Rainy and the Duke must team up to track him down, along with a stolen copy of Nancy Drew’s The Secret of the Old Clock that belonged to Rainy’s late mother. Their adventures have them popping in and out of books, including, delightfully, a party scene in The Great Gatsby, and uncovering secrets that could change the course of Rainy’s life. While Shaffer’s writing is a touch too cutesy to mine real emotional depths, the charms of the heroine and the conceit itself make up for it in spades.
Catnip for anyone who ever wished they could walk around in their favorite book.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780593983584
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tour de force.
In 1974, a troubled Vietnam vet inherits a house from a fallen comrade and moves his family to Alaska.
After years as a prisoner of war, Ernt Allbright returned home to his wife, Cora, and daughter, Leni, a violent, difficult, restless man. The family moved so frequently that 13-year-old Leni went to five schools in four years. But when they move to Alaska, still very wild and sparsely populated, Ernt finds a landscape as raw as he is. As Leni soon realizes, “Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you.” There are many great things about this book—one of them is its constant stream of memorably formulated insights about Alaska. Another key example is delivered by Large Marge, a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who now runs the general store for the community of around 30 brave souls who live in Kaneq year-round. As she cautions the Allbrights, “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next. There’s a saying: Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” Hannah’s (The Nightingale, 2015, etc.) follow-up to her series of blockbuster bestsellers will thrill her fans with its combination of Greek tragedy, Romeo and Juliet–like coming-of-age story, and domestic potboiler. She re-creates in magical detail the lives of Alaska's homesteaders in both of the state's seasons (they really only have two) and is just as specific and authentic in her depiction of the spiritual wounds of post-Vietnam America.
A tour de force.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-312-57723-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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