A gritty, heartfelt journey through the recent past.
In Stockwell’s three connected novellas, a man stumbles through addiction, recovery, and the countercultural scene of 1990s Washington.
The epigraphs of the first two novellas collected here come from Irvine Welsh and Charles Bukowski; like these writers, Stockwell is concerned with those down on their luck. In these stories, he traces the wobbly arc of Jack, a “microcosm of Generation X” who is “addicted to everything.” When he is first introduced, Jack is 28 years old and living in a psychiatric institution after losing his mother, his primary support system. The first novella, Sleeping in the Daytime, largely traces the period following his release from the institution, including his time in a halfway house rooming with a schizophrenic Vietnam War veteran who never showers and working up the courage to ask out the barista at the local coffee shop he frequents. The narrative includes regular flashbacks to Jack’s past, including his physically abusive relationship with his older brother (“Besides the sporadic 911 calls, occasional attempted knifings, and regular baseball bat duels, things had actually been pretty good between Laurence and Jack back then”) and his attempts to “liberat[e] his mind from Mormon indoctrination.” The second novella, Courting Mediocrity, fills in more of Jack’s backstory, focusing mainly on his first institutionalization at age 18 and how he met most of his crew of friends/fellow drug dealers and abusers. It also charts Jack’s brief stint in Utah, where he turns 30 and finds employment at a Taco Bell. (Jack finds some relief in this stability, but it does not last long.) There is more redemption in the final novella, Squattingin the Shadow of an Ant, which tracks Jack’s path down to Seattle and the most stable of his major relationships. Throughout, Stockwell balances the hard-edged, Gen X tone with more wistful reflections on a time lost. This comes through most strongly in the final few chapters, as Seattle morphs into its present form. Though occasionally repetitive, there is enough life and truth in the prose to keep the reader afloat, even as Jack repeatedly falls into the same destructive patterns.
A gritty, heartfelt journey through the recent past.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781963805895
Page Count: 340
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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