A young girl follows her mother and a wayward group of artists into the Mexican jungle on the eve of World War II in this spare, enchanting novel.
Fourteen-year-old Lara Calaway just wants her mother to notice her. Instead, Leonora, a wealthy New York socialite, is more interested in collecting members of the avant-garde. There's Konrad, a traumatized painter, whom Leonora marries; C., Konrad's longtime lover, a forceful and dedicated writer with hair that "floats around her face like an evil halo"; and the loathed Hetty, "the only other woman with us in Mexico…[who] is just horrible." Maum (Touch, 2017, etc.) depicts Lara's curiosity and longing in exquisite, diary-style vignettes, sketches, notes, and unsent letters. "He'd be so beautiful if he were happy," she muses about Konrad, her new stepfather. "Sometimes at the parties when I catch the way he is with C., I hate my mother for the way she has to have the things that everybody likes." According to Maum, Leonora and Lara Calaway are based loosely on Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter Pegeen while the artists who make up "the entire bin of loons" at Costalegre are composites of surrealists like André Breton, Leonora Carrington, and Djuna Barnes. Lara makes for a fine narrator—young enough to be both enchanted and annoyed by the strange collection of adults that surround her and old enough to explain her frustrations with heartbreaking clarity. Only occasionally does Maum allow her teenager to really sound like a teenager, and then it's played for laughs. "If she ends up putting her museum here," Lara writes of Costalegre and her mother, "I am going to die." Occasional theatrics aside, Lara blooms when she encounters a Dadaist sculptor from Germany, moved by his work and his ability to really see her, "you know, in that way that feels like something has been thrown directly toward you, as if you're on the other end of a straight line." The novel closes as quickly as it opens, in a moment of teenage confusion, rage, and hope.
A lush chronicle of wealth, art, adventure, loneliness, love, and folly told by a narrator you won't be able to forget.Pub Date: July 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947793-36-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Categories: HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Categories: GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | SUSPENSE
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What would you say to your younger self if you could give her advice?
“Wise beyond their years” is an expression we’ve all heard before. But for one Brooklyn teen, that saying becomes all too real when an unexplained event causes her to begin living her adult life in random order. On New Year’s Eve 1982, Oona Lockhart is about to turn 19. Change is on the horizon, as she must decide whether to leave school to tour with her band, Early Dawning, or quit the band to continue her studies in London. Does she follow her loving boyfriend and band mate, Dale, or does she make a stable, independent decision for herself? Almost as if standing on a precipice between past and future, Oona finds it important to tell herself: “Remember this party. Every second of it. Every person here.” When the clock strikes midnight, she opens her eyes to a reality far different from the one she'd been experiencing—and decades later. The abrupt shift sets the pace for the rest of the book—it turns out that even when you’re living life out of order, time passes just as quickly. Right as you settle in with one version of Oona, whether it be free-spirited, club-going Oona or middle-aged investor Oona, it’s almost New Year’s again. The effect is something like narrative jet lag, making it impossible to feel grounded in time. Which is, no doubt, the point. Montimore (Asleep From Day, 2018) is not afraid to wrench Oona from one season of life to another, satisfied with ending a year in a fashion as incomplete as this: “She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence.” These vignettes, removed from linear neatness, celebrate the unpredictability and imperfect nature of life. Even when Oona has the opportunity to leave notes for the next version of herself, it doesn’t always mean she’ll follow her advice. With each temporal shift, Oona is left longing for what came before, but supporting characters like Oona’s mom, Madeleine, and confidante, Kenzie, serve as talismans that guide her back to the present. In the end, we must give credit to Oona for finding joy and even humor in her situation and to Montimore for developing a complex narrative held together by simple truths. Read this to get a bit lost, to root for a character with a strong love for herself, and to connect on a deeply human level with the fear of leading an incomplete life.
A heartfelt novel that celebrates its implausibility with a unique joie de vivre.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-23660-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Categories: FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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