A startling and rewarding story of pain and alienation.
In Ambrose’s novel, a Black gay man with bipolar disorder navigates a mental health system and financial troubles.
One day in 2010, in Norristown, Pennsylvania,Bowie Long, still dressed in his pajamas, went to visit his mother at work at the county administration building with the intention of asking her for his check from Social Security; then, for reasons he doesn’t fully understand, he tried to kill her. Now he’s in a state mental facility, where he’s never been before:“The state hospital was the place of last resort. The place for the true loons. Or those that didn’t have insurance to pay for anything else. There were no perks here.” The 32-year-old Bowie was diagnosed with bipolar disorder years ago and has long heard voices in his head. He’s soon let out of the hospital, but this just puts him back into his chaotic home life. He and his mother, Magdelene—who quickly forgives him for trying to murder her—are both gambling addicts, and often spending their scant money on the slots at the local casino. Bowie isn’t above doing sex work here and there to make a couple extra bucks, as well. At home, though, his mother berates him constantly and makes him uncomfortable by frequently being naked in his presence. The only bright spot in his life is his sometime-lover, Eden, a compassionate man who desperately tries to save Bowie from bad choices. As Bowie navigates the mental health and legal systems during one crisis after another, Eden attempts to help him deal with a childhood trauma that might be contributing to his problems—but, Bowie wonders, is he simply too far gone to ever lead a normal life?
Over the course of this novel, Ambrose shows himself to be a terrific writer on the sentence level, capturing Bowie’s claustrophobic, paranoid existence in a way that will keep readers on their toes, as when Bowie rages against his keepers at the state hospital: “After the tenth hour, he did what it seemed they had been waiting for. He leaped up, screaming, and threw a chair. They descended like night, pinioning him beneath their weight, ignoring his outbursts, his demands to go home.” Bowie is a memorable protagonist, and Ambrose elegantly brings this sympathetic and deeply troubled man to life. Magdalene is a brilliant villain, whom the author portrays as just as psychologically complex as her son. The novel is a bit too long at nearly 400 pages, as the ups and downs become a bit repetitive over the course of the work. However, it remains a breathless read, effectively capturing the messiness of mental health and the maddening bureaucracy of the system in place to treat mental illness. It also demonstrates how traumas and living conditions can exacerbate one another, keeping a person trapped in a cycle of ill health and poverty. Overall, it’s a story that truly fixes the reader in the chaos of another person’s mind.
A startling and rewarding story of pain and alienation.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-938841-97-2
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Jaded Ibis Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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