A funny and charming Hollywood tale, but one that could have been tighter.
In Thompson’s novel, a 31-year-old man in Los Angeles with few career prospects begins coaching middle school lacrosse.
It’s 2014, and Ryan Wilson is a 31-year-old aspiring screenwriter who’s become disenchanted by the film industry and upset about his general lack of success: “I was supposed to have things…Tennis lessons and Aesop hand soap. New restaurants I just had to try. The finer things. Thread counts.” This leads him to accept a position as a lacrosse coach at the private Brentwood School. He’s immediately annoyed by the self-important athletic director, Keri,as well as his co-coach, Colby Cuthbert, who lacks appropriate experience and seems more concerned with performing his best approximation of a coach in between comedy gigs. Despite his initial misgivings about the job, Ryan quickly takes to his preteen charges, building a rapport and giving them unique nicknames. He establishes a similar bond with a few of the parents—most notably, Camilla Tourney. Ryan is instantly taken with her, particularly after he learns her husband is a major producer and director. As their friendship, which begins as flirtatious banter, transforms into a full-blown affair, Ryan is torn between his desire for Camilla and his desire to sell a script. Later, the lacrosse team, which has improved under Ryan’s tutelage, makes it to the championship. However, despite Ryan briefly having everything he wants within reach—team victory, romance, a genuine career opportunity—he can’t help but get in his own way. Indeed, as a protagonist, Ryan frequently seems at odds with himself; his internal monologue is full of hyper-specific references (“Venice, California is the Wilco of Los Angeles neighborhoods”), yet in dialogue, he’s mostly vague, though affably irreverent.
Thompson’s tale of one man’s downward spiral into adulthood is, by turns, charming and cringe-inducing—the latter mainly when readers see Ryan falling headlong into a bad decision. However, the novel can be slightly frustrating at times, as some of the more esoteric references during scene-setting could warrant further explanation: “a guy who looked like he produced Doug Liman movies…was probably working at Lakeshore or Bad Robot or HoneyBucket.” For the most part, though, the story’s cultural references are its greatest strengths, as when one character notes how he’d be okay if his wife cheated on him with the actor Matt Dillon: “He’s just threatening enough to be bummed out about but for some reason I could get over it.” However, the dense prose gives the story a meandering fell, and sometimes even undermines the jokes. For example, after a disastrous sexual experience, Ryan muses about Camilla, and his aside lessens the impact of his one-liner: “She finally got the nerve to adulterize—yes, yes: it’s not a noble practice but at the very least the impudent act takes some gall—and all she got was the second to last verse of ‘Desolation Row.’” Thompson is obviously talented, but his constant, fastidious quips sometimes detract from the heart of the piece.
A funny and charming Hollywood tale, but one that could have been tighter.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781957184944
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Onion River Press
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
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
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