Dazzling, magical narratives, full of delight and sorrow.
Crujido’s surreal, romantic stories about an apartment building’s residents offer a dash of magical realism and wonder to their Pacific Northwest settings.
The collection opens with a welcome to the Mt. Vernon Apartments, a three-story building in Spokane, Washington, that houses the dreamy tales’ various characters. There’s a World War I veteran with PTSD who finds a cage containing tiny, bird-sized women with wings, dressed in silk, in “Apartment A: The Songbird (1918).” In “Apartment B: The Tower (1918),” there’s an unnamed lover, locked away like a princess in a tower during a flu epidemic, who eventually floats away like the bride in a Marc Chagall painting. A mannequin from a department store comes alive and tries to escape in “Apartment C: The Mannequin (1934)”; when a manager mistakes her for another woman, she ultimately ends up working there as an employee. Other stories feature a talking bear and a telephone that connects the present to the past. Crujido’s stories are frequently whimsical but often have a touch of melancholy: A couple meet in their dreams but are unable to stop the passage of time; a bitter and irascible widow literally loses her head. With their magic and flights of fancy, these stories have a sweetness to them that, as one passage puts it, is “sugared with sadness.” Crujido remarkably connects moments from 100 years of one building’s history, but in doing so, she reveals the sense of loss and ennui that underpins the passage of time. Indeed, the Mt. Vernon Apartments are haunted by the memories of previous stories. Throughout the collection, Crujido’s clear, careful prose is enhanced by bursts of levity, such as a refrain (“At the exact moment…”) that runs throughout “Apartment E: The Dandelion (1958),” a rich, and scathing, character study of a gossipy middle-aged woman. Gorgeous, italicized postscripts to each tale offer a memorable image or tragic note on which to linger. Individually, these works are delightful treats; together, they’re a sumptuous feast.
Dazzling, magical narratives, full of delight and sorrow.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781634050531
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Chin Music Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
