A promising espionage novel that suffers from its own self-seriousness.
A spy with a difficult past finds love in Fewston’s second espionage novel in a series.
According to a 30-something American by the name of John Lockwood, everyone living in East Berlin in 1975 could be summed up in just a sentence or two—“and they were, by the Stasi.” John’s come to the Communist region to do some spying of his own, although he keeps his objectives close to the vest, even from the reader. Using the name Jacob Miller, he’s on the trail of the shadowy Heads of Leonidas, a covert organization he’s been tracking since he was in Tehran. Now he’s in a divided city at the center of the Cold War, and his task is a lonely one: He watches people from a distance, but his personal interactions are mostly limited to other spies with suspect motivations. Then he meets two people who seem especially interested in him. The first is his 20-year-old neighbor, Nina Rosenberg, who manages to talk her way into his apartment shortly after a dead body is found in the neighborhood. The other is a philosophical old man named Zehrfeld who reveals himself to know far more about John’s past than any stranger should. Nina is boldly critical of East Germany—she blames the government for both her parents’ deaths—and she shares John’s tastes in literature. She also promises to inject some passion into his life, but she’s much younger than he is, and he’s reluctant to drag her into his dangerous world; meanwhile, Zehrfeld is angling to make a deal with John—and when it comes to both love and spycraft, John has trouble saying no.
Despite its status as a sequel (with a third novel planned), this tale of John’s East Berlin mission works rather well as a stand-alone tale. Memories of John’s previous adventures occasionally intrude on the present-day action, but far less so than one might expect. Overall, this is a mood piece with limited fixations, and as such, it delivers more than the usual cloak-and-dagger intrigue of thrillers set during the Cold War. However, the novel is poorly served by Fewston’s prose, which often comes across as excessively melodramatic, as in this passage, in which John describes his first night with Nina: “Like the gods who forgot they had lived, Nina and I talked late into the night. When it started raining around two in the morning, I should’ve known then the rain was a portent of things to come.” And although Fewston resists spy-novel clichés in other areas, several characters frustratingly talk as if they’re auditioning for a James Bond film, as when one says, “I’ve always admired Faust. At least he had ambition, a vision, a goal.” (There are several more references to Goethe’s classic story over the course of the novel.) The plot ultimately descends into similar theatricality, and the ending is unsatisfying—and despite the frequent literary allusions and philosophical tête-à-têtes, the novel leaves readers with disappointingly little to think about.
A promising espionage novel that suffers from its own self-seriousness.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 979-8-4924-3658-2
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.
A lively and unabashedly sentimental novel examines the impact of feminism on four upper-middle-class white women in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1963.
Transplanted Ohioan Margaret Ryan—married to an accountant, raising three young children, and decidedly at loose ends—decides to recruit a few other housewives to form a book club. She’s thinking A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but a new friend, artistic Charlotte Gustafson, suggests Betty Friedan’s brand-new The Feminine Mystique. They’re joined by young Bitsy Cobb, who aspired to be a veterinarian but married one instead, and Vivian Buschetti, a former Army nurse now pregnant with her seventh child. The Bettys, as they christen themselves, decide to meet monthly to read feminist books, and with their encouragement of each other, their lives begin to change: Margaret starts writing a column for a women’s magazine; Viv goes back to work as a nurse; Charlotte and Bitsy face up to problems with demanding and philandering husbands and find new careers of their own. The story takes in real-life figures like the Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and touches on many of the tumultuous political events of 1963. Bostwick treats her characters with generosity and a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment, taking satisfying revenge on the wicked and solving longstanding problems with a few well-placed words, even showing empathy for the more well-meaning of the husbands. As historical fiction, the novel is hampered by its rosy optimism, but its take on the many micro- and macroaggressions experienced by women of the era is sound and eye-opening. Although Friedan might raise an eyebrow at the use her book’s been put to, readers will cheer for Bostwick’s spunky characters.
A sugarcoated take on midcentury suburbia.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781400344741
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Muse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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