An elegantly written historical novel with a compelling love triangle and a couple of clever twists.
Unchecked passion gives rise to tragedy in a small English farming community in the late 1960s.
In 1968, bookish Beth Johnson adores being a farmer’s wife. Though she is not a poet, as she once dreamed, her life laboring in commune with nature is one “where every single day is a different kind of education.” She feels satisfied, especially as she gets to share her moments of rest with her husband, Frank, a reliable and compassionate man, and their close-knit network of family and friends. And yet, there is a seeping wound in their busy life: the loss of their 9-year-old son, Bobby, who died in an accident two years before. When Beth’s first love, Gabriel, unexpectedly moves back to town with his son, Leo, a boy just a bit older than Bobby who is desperately seeking a mother figure, Beth and the reader are blown back to “before”: 1955, before Beth knew what it was to love or to grieve. In addition, Hall intersperses scenes set at a 1969 murder trial so that, though she intentionally obscures the identities of the victim and the suspect until the climax, death crouches over the entire novel. As we watch Beth and Gabriel fall toward one another in two timelines, we are painfully aware that heartbreak is imminent in each. One would think it would be hard to shake this feeling of doom, especially since Hall also makes it clear that Beth will break her commitment to Frank early on, but her prose is so transportive that it’s impossible not to hang on and hold out hope for Beth, Frank, Gabriel, and the people they love. There are several standout scenes, but an especially stunning one comes when Frank’s brother, Jimmy, helps Beth deliver Bobby on the kitchen floor during a violent storm. Indeed, every scene that includes Bobby is touching, especially those that highlight his connection with the land—the characteristic Beth most prizes in Frank and is proud to have found within herself. Crystallized in Beth’s memory as a “boy reaching back to his ancestors through these lumpy green fields, to the sounds and sights, the taste, the touch of a thousand years,” he is without time, like love and loss.
An elegantly written historical novel with a compelling love triangle and a couple of clever twists.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781668078181
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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