A collection shot through with crystalline moments but that ultimately holds readers at arm’s length.
Short fiction populated by characters whose various longings remain unfulfilled.
In “By Design,” the second story in Sestanovich’s debut collection, Suzanne, a successful graphic designer and the founder of her own firm, is sued for sexual harassment by a younger male colleague. Suzanne’s life falls to pieces: She pulls the plug on her marriage, leaves her company, throws out all her clothing, and moves into a high-rise, where she keeps her apartment’s shelves bare. Her adult son asks her to design his wedding invitations. They will reflect Suzanne’s aesthetic, she thinks: “elegant….Occasionally a little too austere.” The same could be said of Sestanovich. These stories are restrained, nearly aloof, despite the fact that the characters are constantly and messily butting up against the futility of their desires. In “Old Hope,” the young, aimless narrator decides to suddenly resume correspondence with her former high school English teacher while she and a male friend struggle to understand whether they are attracted to each other. The title story features a narrator who shares a tiny apartment with her guitarist/activist boyfriend, watching his life unravel at the same time her ex is elected to Congress and not being sure where her loyalties lie, if anywhere at all. The closing story, “Separation,” traces the life of Kate and the various separations she endures: first when her young husband dies, then when she works at a nursery school helping toddlers with separation anxiety, then, finally, as the mother of a troubled young woman who leaves home to move across the country. Even in these emotionally wrenching scenarios, Sestanovich remains taciturn, offering the reader images and sentences of delicate beauty but leaving much, perhaps too much, unspoken.
A collection shot through with crystalline moments but that ultimately holds readers at arm’s length.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-31809-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
A somber reflection on an increasingly hostile world.
As the world dies, the remnants of the patriarchy and their minions keep right on terrorizing the weak.
Caustically original in the same fashion as her chilling Tender Is the Flesh (2020), Bazterrica’s latest devises an end-of-the-world scenario with a Handmaid’s Tale vibe. The most palpable tragedy is that no matter how the world dies, women always seem to end up with the same sorry fortune. The story is set in an unknown wasteland where all the animals on Earth have perished, with callouts to a mysterious, poisonous haze and a collapsed world. Our narrator is a young woman relegated to sheltering in the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, an isolated, fundamentalist order subservient to an unseen, deity-like “He,” and divided into strict castes. Among these are the Enlightened, kept isolated from the rest of the order behind a mysterious black door; the Chosen, divine and devoted prophets who are ritually mutilated; and the servants marked by contamination, who sit just below the narrator’s caste, the unworthy young women. The story is a little tough to follow due to the narrator’s fragmented memory, not to mention lots of interruptions from the old ultraviolence and body horror. Although men are banned from the cloistered stronghold, it’s a relentlessly sadistic and violent society ruled by the Superior Sister, enforcer of His will and the instrument of punishment up to and including torture and death. The narrator is already mourning Helena, a spirited iconoclast who couldn’t survive under such oppression, when a new arrival named Lucía sparks fresh hope that may prove as fruitless as everything else in this bleak testament to suffering. As a subversion of expectations and an indictment of unchecked power, it’s unflinching and provocative, but readers expecting a satisfying denouement may be left wanting.
A somber reflection on an increasingly hostile world.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781668051887
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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