Observant, stirring writing that explores the challenges of openness.
An Indian optician living in New York City comes to terms with the fact that she’s gay in Sood’s novel.
The story opens in Queens with Priya, a woman with a master’s degree in English who later became “mesmerized by the world of optics.” Currently, she’s mourning the death of her cousin, Prem. As the family prepares to scatter Prem’s ashes into the Ganges in India, she reflects on the tight bond she shared with her cousin and the secrets they shared. Born a day apart in the same hospital in Calcutta, Prem remained in India, a closeted gay man who married and became a father before taking his own life; Priya, meanwhile, relocated to New York, where she fell for fellow student Leyla, only for her love to be unrequited. Priya now works at 20/20 Optical, where her mundane daily life involves awkward interactions with customers and coping with her quirky colleagues—Sam, the owner, who sees the business as his “lifeblood,” and Ed, a lazy yet gifted optician with a mysterious past. Priya’s world is thrown into turmoil when Leyla is unexpectedly hired as 20/20’s new doctor and reveals that she now has a husband. It’s unusual to set a novel in an optician’s store, but Sood makes it work brilliantly, as its workers are endearing and sharply observed, as when Priya describes Sam: “He struck me as someone who didn’t just open a business but poured himself into it.” The narrative is punctuated with precise optician-speak (“rimless frames with hi-index lenses in a minus six or six and a quarter”); however, the crackle of jargon is offset by Priya’s tender inner thoughts, which Sood relates poetically: “what had broken my spirit was that I loved her.” The novel also offers moments of poignant, powerful dialogue along the way: “ ‘We could be in a different place.’ I said. ‘If people just talked about it.’ ” Readers seeking a neat resolution to the story may be mildly dissatisfied, but this makes Priya’s emotional journey no less gripping.
Observant, stirring writing that explores the challenges of openness.Pub Date: May 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62-601503-6
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Riverdale Avenue Books
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A captivating allegory about evil, lies, and forgiveness.
Truth and deception clash in this tale of the Holocaust.
Udo Graf is proud that the Wolf has assigned him the task of expelling all 50,000 Jews from Salonika, Greece. In that city, Nico Krispis is an 11-year-old Jewish boy whose blue eyes and blond hair deceive, but whose words do not. Those who know him know he has never told a lie in his life—“Never be the one to tell lies, Nico,” his grandfather teaches him. “God is always watching.” Udo and Nico meet, and Udo decides to exploit the child’s innocence. At the train station where Jews are being jammed into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, Udo gives Nico a yellow star to wear and persuades him to whisper among the crowd, “I heard it from a German officer. They are sending us to Poland. We will have new homes. And jobs.” The lad doesn’t know any better, so he helps persuade reluctant Jews to board the train to hell. “You were a good little liar,” Udo later tells Nico, and delights in the prospect of breaking the boy’s spirit, which is more fun and a greater challenge than killing him outright. When Nico realizes the horrific nature of what he's done, his truth-telling days are over. He becomes an inveterate liar about everything. Narrating the story is the Angel of Truth, whom according to a parable God had cast out of heaven and onto earth, where Truth shattered into billions of pieces, each to lodge in a human heart. (Obviously, many hearts have been missed.) Truth skillfully weaves together the characters, including Nico; his brother, Sebastian; Sebastian’s wife, Fannie; and the “heartless deceiver” Udo. Events extend for decades beyond World War II, until everyone’s lives finally collide in dramatic fashion. As Truth readily acknowledges, his account is loaded with twists and turns, some fortuitous and others not. Will Nico Krispis ever seek redemption? And will he find it? Author Albom’s passion shows through on every page in this well-crafted novel.
A captivating allegory about evil, lies, and forgiveness.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780062406651
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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