A fever dream of a novel that will enchant fans of contemporary fabulism.
A mother's unconditional love for her unusual child—an "owl-baby"—drastically changes her life and her world.
"Each of us knows from experience that birthing any child is the start of a lifelong terrorization by the very child we love, and yet we mothers are able to bear it because we love our children more than we love our own lives, even as our children blithely seek to destroy us." Tiny draws this conclusion several months into her new life as the mother of Chouette, a baby she conceived not with her husband, who is "kind, strong, steady, normal, and a bit of a looker," but with her owl lover, who is "giant, musky, molting, monstrous, amoral, uncivilized and fickle." As it turns out, her husband is horrified by the baby—whom he insists on calling Charlotte—as is the medical establishment, including Doctor Canola, who pronounces terrible diagnoses, and Doctor Great, who offers deforming treatments. (Doctor Booze, however, doesn't see much of a problem.) Even before Chouette's birth, Tiny realizes she will have to give up her career as a cellist—though music still fills her head, and a playlist of all the pieces mentioned in the book is included in an appendix. She basically ends up renouncing human society altogether as she learns how to care for her unique child, involving a steady supply of mice and shrews, a nocturnal schedule, and a driving need to hunt, claw, and eviscerate. After her husband essentially abandons Tiny and Chouette—though he never abandons his frantic quest for a "cure"—Tiny's extreme loneliness is interrupted by a surprise visit from one of her sisters-in-law, and that is just one of many unexpected and sometimes frightening directions her life will now take. Oshetsky's writing is virtuosic, laced with dry humor, and perfectly matched to the parable she unfolds in this impressive debut. As Tiny puts it, "I prefer to speak in metaphor: That way no logic can trap me, and no rule can bind me, and no fact can limit me or decide for me what's possible."
A fever dream of a novel that will enchant fans of contemporary fabulism.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-306667-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.
An undergraduate at Brown University unearths the buried history of a Latine artist.
As in her bestselling debut, Olga Dies Dreaming (2022), Gonzalez shrewdly anatomizes racial and class hierarchies. Her bifurcated novel begins at a posh art-world party in 1985 as the title character, a Cuban American land and body artist, garners recognition that threatens the ego of her older, more famous husband, white minimalist sculptor Jack Martin. The story then shifts to Raquel Toro, whose working-class, Puerto Rican background makes her feel out of place among the “Art History Girls” who easily chat with professors and vacation in Europe. Nonetheless, in the spring of 1998, Raquel wins a prestigious summer fellowship at the Rhode Island School of Design, and her faculty adviser is enthusiastic about her thesis on Jack Martin, even if she’s not. Soon she’s enjoying the attentions of Nick Fitzsimmons, a well-connected, upper-crust senior. As Raquel’s story progresses, Anita’s first-person narrative acquires a supernatural twist following the night she falls from the window of their apartment —“jumped? or, could it be, pushed?”—but it’s grimly realistic in its exploration of her toxic relationship with Jack. (A dedication, “In memory of Ana,” flags the notorious case of sculptor Carl Andre, tried and acquitted for the murder of his wife, artist Ana Mendieta.) Raquel’s affair with Nick mirrors that unequal dynamic when she adapts her schedule and appearance to his whims, neglecting her friends and her family in Brooklyn. Gonzalez, herself a Brown graduate, brilliantly captures the daily slights endured by someone perceived as Other, from microaggressions (Raquel’s adviser refers to her as “Mexican”) to brutally racist behavior by the Art History Girls. While a vividly rendered supporting cast urges Raquel to be true to herself and her roots, her research on Martin leads to Anita’s art and the realization that she belongs to a tradition that’s been erased from mainstream art history.
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781250786210
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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