The scent of spilled beer and overflowing ashtrays practically wafts from the pages. Just tell your phone to play Doug Sahm.
An atmospheric slice of the 1970s Austin music scene, with reality-adjacent characters and settings.
Based on extensive research, Collins’ debut novel breathes life into a scenario that occurred before her birth, but is within memory for a healthy chunk of her book’s likely audience. Set at the Rush Creek Saloon, which mirrors the long-gone Soap Creek Saloon, its central character is Doug Moser, modeled closely on the late country-blues musician Doug Sahm, who lived for a time in a house in the woods behind the bar, as does his namesake character. Other places and people, notably the Armadillo World Headquarters and Joe Ely, appear without aliases. Over this historic scaffolding, Collins has wrapped a novel in the voice of three characters: Doug; Deanna, half of the couple who owns and tends the bar; and Steven, a very in-your-face 19-year-old fan whose intrusive presence drives the most dramatic plotline. Unfortunately, Steven’s story is not the most successful aspect of the book, though little can be said about it without spoilers. A more effective subplot focuses on the attraction between Doug and Deanna, both of whom are married—sizzling, though unresolved. Also intriguing is the relationship between Doug and Joe Ely, whose success Doug simultaneously envies and tries to leverage. The daughter of a drummer who was part of this scene back in the day, Collins writes well about music and does a fine job of bringing the bar to life in all its detail, from the plugging-in of the neon star out front to the clipping of the Fritos onto their display stand. “We’d leave the back door wide open, and the side door too, and people would cluster around them frenzied, burst out into the parking lot like herds of animals, trying to catch any kind of breeze.” She does not romanticize the excessive drinking and drugging that was endemic to this scene, and the nasty bar fights they led to among a half-redneck, half-hippie crowd are here in force. Though the book is generally true to its period, a nitpicker must note that the word janky, used several times, was not common slang until almost 1990.
The scent of spilled beer and overflowing ashtrays practically wafts from the pages. Just tell your phone to play Doug Sahm.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780385548847
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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