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POST-TRAUMATIC

Buried under excess verbiage, there's a thoughtful novel struggling to come out.

A Black Latina lawyer represents patients at a New York psychiatric hospital while struggling with the aftereffects of her own past trauma.

Johnson’s debut opens with a bang. In the midst of consulting with a new client, Vivian calms a troubled teenager who has just slashed a nurse with a knife. Outwardly she's cool and professional, but once the incident is resolved successfully, Vivian inwardly crumbles, and we soon learn that she's saddled with deep-rooted emotional problems. Haunted by dark memories of childhood sexual abuse, she holds herself together in a state of hypervigilant awareness of possible male violence. A simple subway ride turns into a terrifying adventure in which she’s “besieged by animal fear." Vivian can only relax when she’s smoking weed with her best friend, Jane, who also survived a dysfunctional, abusive family. A dreaded family reunion in which Vivian’s worst fears are realized drives her to a dramatic decision. Will it bring the healing Vivian craves or spiral her further down into a nervous breakdown? While Johnson’s theme—how unresolved personal traumas can cripple a life—is compelling, her execution is marred by clunky prose that makes it difficult to connect with the story (“There was something about shallow clichéd lyrics combined with a sweeping sonic landscape in the sterile setting of a CVS, Duane Reade, or Walgreens that always moved her in a Don DeLillo way”). In trying to capture her protagonist’s anxious and obsessive state of mind, the author often gets bogged down in details that disrupt the narrative flow. An entire paragraph describing calorie counts as diet-obsessed Vivian agonizes over which snacks to purchase doesn’t make for compelling reading. Aside from brutally honest Jane, who calls Vivian out on her self-absorption, the other characters are barely fleshed out. And strangely, the novel hardly delves into the abuse at the core of Vivian’s troubles. Her abuser is simply called “the violent man.”

Buried under excess verbiage, there's a thoughtful novel struggling to come out.

Pub Date: April 5, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-316-26423-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022

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MY FRIENDS

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

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THE WEDDING PEOPLE

Uneven but fitfully amusing.

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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

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