An undisciplined but often captivating love story, filtering strained emotion through vaulting intellectualism.
Two lovers contemplate their relationship along with philosophy, subatomic physics, and other topics in Bernard’s romance.
The novel begins with a vaguely described and possibly violent rupture between a woman named Sasha Kamenev and her boyfriend, Pascal, who then repair to the titular bar to rehash and ruminate over their years-long, intermittent relationship. The story unfolds as a series of dialogues between the duo that are dominated by Pascal’s long soliloquies, with the more reticent Sasha interjecting comments that tend to puncture his grandiosity (He: “let’s live in a big, soft windblown bubble of enchantment, a fantasy of what life might have been if our gods had been kind and wise and not what they are: rocks and wind and exploding suns and galaxies driving across space like hurricanes.” She: “Will you please shut up?”). These exchanges reveal next to nothing about the material circumstances of their lives, dwelling instead on the emotional friction between Pascal, who vacillates between claiming to be ardently in love with Sasha and affecting a stance of alienation from love in general, and Sasha, who adopts a cooler, warier attitude toward the domineering Pascal. The conversations broaden out to explore Pascal’s worldview, touching on his misanthropy toward the “shabby, flawed, shameless…lazy or brutal or stupid” run of humanity; his Nietzschean sense that individual autonomy and happiness are the highest goals; his resentment over being rejected by women he is attracted to (Sasha being a rare exception); his horror at the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting; his trepidation about AI’s potential to become humanity’s master; and his impressions of the Higgs boson. In her responses, Sasha usually upholds countervailing values of love and connectedness, but occasionally gives way to her own pessimism, at one point declaring herself a new species because humankind is such a disgrace.
With no plot to speak of, Bernard’s novel is essentially a chamber piece about two people cautiously inching their way toward—and sometimes away from—commitment, through a thicket of digressive thinking and talking. The prose is dense and elliptical, with philosophical disquisitions suddenly erupting into cryptic prose poems (“Virtue won’t make you happy. Not vice, not money, not love. Happiness makes you happy, then it bores you and you decide to try misery just for a change. Though escaping misery is not the snap that escaping happiness is”). The author is often self-indulgent, but he’s also a gifted writer; when he hits, he’s capable of gorgeous lyricism. On a seashore, he conjures “[t]he endless distant roll and crash of waves along the beach, the lulling confusion of whiteness, a serene and tranquil drama raving and collapsing without a pause from horizon to horizon.” Bernard also delivers penetrating insights into love and its failures: “Did you ever realize how divorce destroys in a particularly cruel way even the happiest memories of a marriage? How every memory of some joy you may have had is poisoned by the knowledge of what followed?” Black-and-white photos—portraits of prim Edwardian children, anti-portraits of adults with their faces blurred, snowscapes with the outlines of trees and light poles barely visible—lend an arresting, ghostly visual aura to the story.
An undisciplined but often captivating love story, filtering strained emotion through vaulting intellectualism.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2020
ISBN: 9781587905148
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Regent Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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