An unfortunately bland sketch of addiction, millennial listlessness, and the redemptive quality of craftsmanship with some...
An opioid addict–turned–apprentice boat builder tries to find himself on the Northern California coast.
We meet 27-year-old “digital refugee” Eli “Berg” Koenigsberg at a low point in his life: After a concussion led to an opioid addiction, then rehab, he has moved to Talinas, a town on the Northern California coast, where he hopes to establish “a sober life”—instead he’s breaking into houses for drugs. But within pages, Berg cleans himself up—at least a little. He gets a job, manages to wean himself temporarily off pills, and then apprentices himself to Alejandro Vega, a boat builder who tells him things like “stop thinking about the result. Stop wanting [the work] to be over right away and I promise everything will go better.” Alejandro is “a genius,” his mind “borderless and kinetic,” and under his influence Berg learns not just to work with wood, but to “get outside of himself.” But will Alejandro’s healing influence be enough to combat the lurking urges of addiction? Gumbiner’s debut is an underachieving redemption tale, and its failures are familiar to that particular genus of didactic literature—namely: The difficulties from which the characters need redeeming feel like excuses for the author to show us how exactly redemption can be had. Gumbiner could have sidestepped this with detail, by diving deeply into his human subjects—but his novel, like its characters, aspires toward simplicity rather than complexity. The result is that everything—the problem, the solutions, the quirky Northern California vibe, even the potentially fascinating fact that Berg robbed Alejandro’s house before later becoming his apprentice—feels like a plot device, and thus unconvincing, one-dimensional, bland. There is the occasional arresting line; for example, the skin on an addict’s face looks like it has been “stretched tight and then stapled across his jawline.” But the book is mostly composed of apathetic sentences (a supporting character’s storytelling is “disjointed and difficult to follow, like an avant-garde novel”), vapid dialogue (“ ‘What’s up, Berg?…’ ‘Hi Kenneth…do you remember my girlfriend, Nell?’ ‘Hi,’ Nell said. ‘Oh hi,” Kenneth said”), and clichéd profundity (“the problem was he didn’t know what he wanted”).
An unfortunately bland sketch of addiction, millennial listlessness, and the redemptive quality of craftsmanship with some Northern California flare.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-944211-55-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
A story about survival that is heartbreakingly honest and wryly funny, perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes and Elizabeth Berg.
A woman faces a new life after surviving a plane crash in this moving story from Center (Happiness for Beginners, 2015, etc.).
Margaret Jacobsen has always been afraid of flying—which is why she’s extra hesitant to get in a plane flown by her pilot-in-training boyfriend, Chip, on Valentine’s Day. When Chip proposes in the air, Margaret has everything she’s ever wanted: an MBA, a great job lined up, and now the fiance of her dreams. But then Margaret’s biggest nightmare becomes a reality: The plane crashes. Chip walks away without a scratch while Margaret has severe burns on her neck and a spinal cord injury. Suddenly, everything about Margaret’s life has changed: Her job offer is rescinded, Chip can’t cope with her injuries, and she may never walk again. Now, Margaret has only her family to depend on—her well-meaning but controlling mother, her loving father, and her black-sheep sister, Kitty, who returns to town after years of estrangement. As her family members try in their own ways to motivate Margaret, she also has to get through physical therapy with Ian, the world’s grumpiest Scottish physical therapist. He has a prickly exterior, but Margaret slowly begins to realize that there may be more to him than she initially thought. A story that could be either uncompromisingly bleak or unbearably saccharine is neither in Center’s hands; Margaret faces her challenges with a sense of humor that feels natural. She has days when the reality of her changed life hits her and she can’t get out of bed, and she has moments where she and Kitty laugh so hard they cry. What she ultimately learns is that while her life may be much different than she expected and she may never be fully healed, as Ian puts it, “It’s the trying that heals you.” Margaret learns to take control of her own life in the wake of loss and change, trying to form a life she wants instead of a life everyone else wants for her. Center’s characters, especially Margaret and Kitty, leap off the page with their unique voices, and their relationships evolve slowly and satisfyingly. Although this is largely the story of Margaret learning to make the most of her life, it’s also a touching and believable love story with plenty of romantic-comedy flourishes.
A story about survival that is heartbreakingly honest and wryly funny, perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes and Elizabeth Berg.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-14906-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
A rich, deeply felt novel about family ties, immigration, sexual longing, faith, and desire. Simultaneously raw and luminous.
In U.S.–based Colombian author Delgado Lopera's coming-of-age novel, a 15-year-old Colombian girl struggles with her identity and her burgeoning sexuality.
Dragged unwillingly from Bogotá to Miami, crammed with her mother and sister into her grandmother's apartment at the Heather Glen Apartment Complex, Francisca misses her friends and her former life. But she can't go home, because "this wasn't a Choose Your Own Migration multiple-choice adventure." In a scene early in the book, her mother insists on baptizing a child she miscarried 17 years before, using a plastic doll from a discount store as a stand-in baby. Manic one moment and sad the next, Mami has joined the Iglesia Cristiana Jesucristo Redentor, an evangelical Colombian church in "a stinky room in the Hyatt Hotel nobody cared to vacuum." In the car on their way there, the doll stares at Francisca with a fixed, plastic smile. "Are you happy now, asshole, I wanted to say....You're still dead, pendejo." With a whip-smart, unapologetic voice peppered with Colombian slang, Francisca pulls us into her new life in "Yanquilandia." Trouble arises when she meets Carmen the pastor's daughter, who wants her to accept Jesus into her heart. Francisca imagines God in "a dentist's waiting room checking in with the receptionist every so often, Did Francisca receive my son in her heart yet? (said no God ever)." Instead, she finds herself falling in love with Carmen, threatening her family's tenuous place in the immigrant community. Though the plot revolves around a coming-out story, the great strength of Delgado Lopera's writing lies in its layered portrayals of these characters and their world. "Women in my family possessed a sixth sense...from the close policing of our sadness: Your tristeza wasn't yours, it was part of the larger collective female sadness jar to which we all contributed."
A rich, deeply felt novel about family ties, immigration, sexual longing, faith, and desire. Simultaneously raw and luminous.Pub Date: March 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-936932-75-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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