A thoughtful examination of a subject rarely addressed in contemporary literature.
Poet Birdsong’s fiction debut: three novellas about African American women grappling with their families’ and communities’ attitudes toward their albinism.
They come from very different backgrounds in Shreveport, Louisiana. Suzette is the spoiled daughter of a wealthy car dealer, still living at home at age 20 because her controlling father doesn’t want her to go to college or get a job. Six years out of college, Maple is still drifting among dead-end jobs and taking handouts from her mother, a good-time gal whose income currently comes from a drug-dealing boyfriend but whose past includes stripping and porn. Agnes fled poverty in Shreveport for Fisk University, graduate school, and a lectureship at Vanderbilt, but she’s now 34, unemployed, and broke, grading high school essays in Utah for a pittance. Nonetheless, the three novellas show each woman shaped by her skin and people’s reactions to it as central facts in their development. Suzette’s story, Drive, is an overlong coming-of-age tale with a fairly predictable denouement redeemed by a poignant depiction of a sheltered girl: “Everything that’s happenin around me is about me. But don’t nobody wanna tell me wha’s goin on.” Maple’s odyssey in Bottled Water is a more interesting saga of devastating loss and grief overcome with the help of a man who has his own experience of bereavement to deal with. Maple’s Momi is a fabulously vital character, inappropriately open with her daughter about sex and drugs but lovingly accepting of the white skin that Maple—like Suzette—thinks makes her undesirable. We see in Mind the Prompt that Agnes’ experiences of being mocked for her skin color in high school by her social-climbing sister have scarred her emotionally to the extent that she can’t keep a job and lives with an abusive man, but even this keeningly sad tale offers hope in a denouement that shows Agnes, like Suzette and Maple, tentatively embracing a new beginning.
A thoughtful examination of a subject rarely addressed in contemporary literature.Pub Date: Feb. 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5387-2139-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.
Childhood friends, almost-sweethearts, a misunderstanding, and a funeral.
Blair Lang and Declan Renshaw were best friends who went on one date before a disagreement and an accident sent them in different directions after high school. Now Blair is back from college to be with her great-aunt Lottie, who’s dying, and to support her single mother in small-town Seabrook, California. Finding a job at a coffee shop puts her in the path of her former boyfriend, since he turns out to be its owner. Can the two get past their mistakes? The novel uses the popular second-chance romance trope, but Pham fails to energize it through interesting characters. Blair’s grief over her great-aunt’s death and her plan to help her mother are overshadowed by internal monologues about her feelings, the way her friends aren’t paying attention to her, and the novel she plans to write. Declan’s distinguishing characteristic, besides being a former high school quarterback, is his skill at building birdhouses. Unsurprisingly, the couple doesn’t have much chemistry; when they embrace, their “bodies meld like…memory foam.” The wooden characters, unusual word choices (“conglomerate of pedestrians,” “litany of plants”), and odd turns of phrase (“tension melting from his eyebrows like butter melting in a warm pan”) are almost enough to obscure the lack of plot development. What passes for stakes is easily defused when Blair comes into an inheritance that saves her from working as a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York—so she can write a romance novel.
A romance that could have used significant rethinking.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781668095188
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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