This tale about human misconnections offers sensitive, finely wrought prose but a dreary protagonist.
A gay man floundering in New York City immerses himself in promiscuity and an authoritarian cult in this novel.
Andy Clarcek weathers much kitchen-sink drama growing up in a working-class home where his alcoholic father, Vic, and mother, Louise, dish out violence and abhor his and older brother Jimmy’s gay sexuality. After college in the 1970s, Andy escapes from small-town Connecticut to New York, where he plunges into anonymous pickup sex in the city’s bars, bathhouses, and porn theaters. Alas, steady relationships always fizzle before they start, leaving Andy feeling lonely and adrift. He eventually joins “the group,” a psychoanalytic cult run by therapists who pressure patients to blame their problems on their mothers’ emotional manipulations. At the cult’s urging, Andy cuts off contact with Louise and Jimmy, leaving them baffled and distraught. He spends years stewing in the group’s communal apartments, avant-garde theater company, and Marxist doctrines; working boring technical writing and coding gigs; and furtively visiting gay trysting spots. But as the cult unravels and AIDS erupts in the ’80s, he reaches out to repair broken ties. Andy’s story unfolds in letters to and from friends and family that give voice to several sharply drawn, piquant characters, including his cousin Walter, a convicted felon with a feisty, hard-boiled outlook. Kavulish is a talented writer who registers the quiet yet gut-wrenching pathos of broken families and the ravages of the AIDS epidemic as well as the delicate nuances of attraction. At one point, Andy recalls a charged adolescent encounter with a sailor: “He didn’t say anything, but just looked real quick at me and gave me a little smile, almost like a wise smile, like he knew something about me that he thought was amusing.” Unfortunately, the baggy, overstuffed novel bogs down in uninvolving details: “Once your program gets read by the compiler (that’s the gizmo that translates your COBOL code written in the English language into machine language that only a computer can understand), real things happen.” Worse, Andy is an unappealing man—passive, feckless, forever wallowing in funks. (“How friendless I’ve become.…I hate to think how I squandered my life....What will happen when I get old? I’ll be holed up alone in this tiny apartment, looking at the world pass by.”) Readers may feel depressed and finally exasperated at his endless moping.
This tale about human misconnections offers sensitive, finely wrought prose but a dreary protagonist.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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