This intricate meditation on grief, trauma, and parenting adheres to a captivating, unpredictable internal logic.
A darkly humorous workplace drama set in a rapidly collapsing London.
James Ballard, a 38-year-old copy editor for the Royal London Journal of Medicine and widowed father of 6-month-old Fiona, can’t find the words for many of the surreal events taking place around him. That’s a neat layer of irony in Shuker’s tale of office camaraderie, societal collapse, and grief. Everything seems a tenth of a degree off, unable to be explained by sound logic or reasoning. The characters grasp for meaning, finding that their work in the highly structured world of the Royal London is no match for a city quickly descending into chaos. James is stalked by an anonymous group of roving teens in his North London community. They threaten and taunt, eventually attacking Tatia, his daughter’s babysitter (and his hired sexual partner), and are seemingly connected to all sorts of strange events. Fiona’s bedroom floods and is inundated with leaves and debris despite no obvious leak. There is no explanation for this, outside of some vague sort of sabotage from the marauding teens, which James also uses to explain how their Rhodesian ridgeback ends up in Fiona’s room. This sort of mysterious disconnect propels the novel: The death of James’ wife, for example, is a mystery whose answer is never revealed but is hinted at in a section called “Search history.” London is succumbing to rioters, looters, and general chaos, but the world of the Royal London, of James and Fiona, remains fragmented from the reality bearing down on them. Toward the end of the book, James goes on a mad dash, looking for the child he has inexplicably lost—the baby who relies on him alone to exist in this world. She appears abruptly and magically, like so many characters and moments in Shuker’s bold, elliptical novel.
This intricate meditation on grief, trauma, and parenting adheres to a captivating, unpredictable internal logic.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9781640097056
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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