A deeply moving family tale written in a smoothly poetic style.
In this novel, a retired English teacher in a small Southern town struggles to accept the death of her ex-husband.
Janet Hall has moved back to Trion, Alabama, the intellectually cloistered hometown she fled to study literature. Decades ago, she married Jacob Hall, an ambitious fiction writer she’d met in high school. They eventually divorced—he wanted kids and she desired a life of independence, and Janet could no longer tolerate his serial infidelity. But 35 years later, they remain close friends, with their lives deeply enmeshed, both unable to cut the “umbilicus of passion,” a memorable coinage in Courington’s poetically nimble tale. Janet still loves Jacob and neglects to restore her maiden name, and he remains entirely dependent on her editorial oversight of his writing. Despite some success, he’s filled with remorse that he’s never published a major novel or lived up to the excited expectations of his childhood teachers. Janet is in Trion after inheriting a house from a relative. She threatens to cut off Jacob, who lives in Illinois, if he won’t join her, and then she learns he’s dead, apparently from a heart attack. But Janet begins to suspect that he killed himself—he valorized the suicide of great authors like Hemingway as an act of heroism. She becomes obsessed with discovering if she is ultimately responsible for his death, a desperate investigation poignantly portrayed by the author. Courington delicately explores the ways in which literature can emancipate or imprison those devoted to it—it can crush dreams of grandeur just as easily as it can conjure them. The author powerfully captures the impossibility of ever fully leaving one’s past behind, a lesson finally learned by Janet: “As a kid, I felt trapped here, and Jacob became my way out—the beginning of a life filled with hope and ideas, the vision of a new day. He said small towns are for the small-minded. And I agreed. But I’ve begun to realize that my world is like a worn Samsonite suitcase I carry wherever I go—scratched and dented with locks that can pop open at any time.” This is an affectingly melancholic work, laced with insights and communicated in a quietly meditative prose.
A deeply moving family tale written in a smoothly poetic style.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798989451364
Page Count: 219
Publisher: All Things That Matter Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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