by Chris Power ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 4, 2021
An entertaining literary thriller that traces intrigue from the writer’s mind to the latest headlines.
Will a man’s tales of Russian oligarchs and murders be a blocked writer’s salvation or his doom?
It’s been two years since British writer Power’s well-received fiction debut (Mothers: Stories, 2019), and it’s been four years since the publication of the debut story collection of his lead character, Robert Prowe (hmm). But Robert is blocked now and well past deadline on his contracted first novel while Power, of course, has delivered his. Robert is living in Berlin with his wife and two daughters when he meets fellow Briton Patrick, a ghostwriter. Their acquaintance grows to something like friendship as Patrick reveals his ties to a Russian millionaire who hired him to write about his rags-to-riches life and how he fell afoul of Putin. The oligarch, who gives Patrick computer files damaging to the Russian ruler, dies mysteriously, and Patrick fears he will be targeted next by the Kremlin’s thugs. Robert is skeptical about all this but recognizes good material for the novel he needs to write and so encourages Patrick to keep talking. Then strange things start to happen: A window that’s always locked is found open, a friend commits suicide, and on and on. There are familiar questions raised here about how writers get and use material from real life, but what Power does cleverly is make them part of the story’s rising suspense, stoking the tension and disconnect between Robert and Patrick and even inserting some novel within the novel as the narrative intermittently shifts into Robert’s fictional rendering of Patrick’s adventures with the oligarch. Power’s understated style abets the tension, creating gaps and unanswered questions that pull the reader along, recalling Hermione Lee’s description of Penelope Fitzgerald’s prose as “plain, compact, and subtle,” leaving “much unsaid."
An entertaining literary thriller that traces intrigue from the writer’s mind to the latest headlines.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-29844-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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by Alison Espach ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 30, 2024
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
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by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 20, 2021
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
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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
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