A short, expressive lesson on preserving and safeguarding Black history.
In her latest novelette, Clovis guides readers through Black stories.
This second-person narrative places “You,” the reader, in Princeton University’s Firestone Library. You’re there to uncover and reveal Black stories before the librarian “captures” them for herself. The key to this mission is in her spectacles, which you’ll simply need to swipe from her face. Their lenses “can warp time and magnify distant galaxies of thought and experience.” They take you to a special world where language transforms into a visualization of ideas in a space called “the miracle of reading.” Stories connect the past, present, and future. For example, in 2021, Clovis sits in Einstein’s old Princeton classroom, where university housecleaner Carnethia, a Black woman, once studied Einstein’s formulas on boards and spoke to him about his lectures. The author links Black stories to such concepts as space-time and synchronicity, recurring themes in her work. These unique voices, passed from generation to generation, create a “circular field of dream time” where the tales are as infinite as the universe. Like Clovis’ preceding novelette, The Kingfisher(2021), this book is allegorical. Rather than focus on Black stories’ specific content, she centers on the importance of keeping them alive. Mutual understanding, too, plays a significant role; the spectacles the reader wears help Clovis, “the scribe,” see herself in her audience. Despite a largely conceptual story, Clovis weaves in tangible elements, equating heavy breath with a “200-pound gorilla” on the reader’s chest and offering a delightfully literal view of string theory. Moreover, her poetic passages brighten every page: “The synchronicity of ripples of gravitational waves that stretch and squeeze space like an accordion of music pulsating behind the spectacles of magnified time encountering planets, stars, and black holes in opposition.” While this book may end, Clovis assures readers that stories of people’s lives never do.
A short, expressive lesson on preserving and safeguarding Black history.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 82
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.
A grandmaster of the hard-boiled crime genre shifts gears to spin bittersweet and, at times, bizarre tales about bruised, sensitive souls in love and trouble.
In one of the 17 stories that make up this collection, a supporting character says: “People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.” She casually drops this gnomic observation as a way of breaking down a lead character’s resistance to smoking a cigarette. But her aphorism could apply to almost all the eponymous awkward Black men examined with dry wit and deep empathy by the versatile and prolific Mosley, who takes one of his occasional departures from detective fiction to illuminate the many ways Black men confound society’s expectations and even perplex themselves. There is, for instance, Rufus Coombs, the mailroom messenger in “Pet Fly,” who connects more easily with household pests than he does with the women who work in his building. Or Albert Roundhouse, of “Almost Alyce,” who loses the love of his life and falls into a welter of alcohol, vagrancy, and, ultimately, enlightenment. Perhaps most alienated of all is Michael Trey in “Between Storms,” who locks himself in his New York City apartment after being traumatized by a major storm and finds himself taken by the outside world as a prophet—not of doom, but, maybe, peace? Not all these awkward types are hapless or benign: The short, shy surgeon in “Cut, Cut, Cut” turns out to be something like a mad scientist out of H.G. Wells while “Showdown on the Hudson” is a saga about an authentic Black cowboy from Texas who’s not exactly a perfect fit for New York City but is soon compelled to do the right thing, Western-style. The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley style remains constant throughout these stories even as they display varied approaches from the gothic to the surreal.
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4956-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
The spirit of grace under pressure and creativity under fire animates a wonderfully diverse set of stories.
Ng selects 20 stories that illustrate why we might still read fiction in a time of disinformation and lies.
As the trials and tribulations of the 21st century have unfolded, the Best American Short Stories anthology has become a particular way of taking the temperature of each passing year. As Ng writes in her introduction to the latest group, “Short stories in particular can act like little tuning forks, helping us to clarify our own values—then allowing us to bring ourselves into alignment with what we believe. In a time when our values are being tested daily, it’s hard to think of anything more important.” Many of them are also fun to read, a quality appreciated more than ever by depressed and overwhelmed readers. The stories are ordered alphabetically, a structure maintained in the following selection, which is unfortunately limited by space. “Take Me to Kirkland,” by Sarah Anderson, is very funny, a little weird, and certainly one of Costco’s finest hours. “What Would I Do for You, What Would You Do for Me?” by Emma Binder is a cinematic mini-thriller about a trans kid visiting his hometown, terrified of being “clocked” by the people he grew up with after he saves a local from drowning. “Time of the Preacher,” by Bret Anthony Johnston, is one of several pandemic stories—in it, a snake, which may or may not be under the refrigerator, inspires a quarantine-breaking cry for help from a fence-builder’s ex-wife. Another story of that time, “Yellow Tulips,” by Nathan Curtis Roberts, also combines endearing, funny first-person narration with a more serious theme. A Mormon man in an uptight Utah suburb has to manage his developmentally disabled adult son through the complexities of quarantine. One day, he discovers that his son has “gotten into the provisions Mormons are all but commanded to keep, eating Nutella and Marshmallow Fluff from their jars.…Brig, we put these things aside for the apocalypse,’” the father says, while his son “grinned gleefully, sugary goo smeared across his lips and fingers. ‘It’s an apocalypse now!’”
The spirit of grace under pressure and creativity under fire animates a wonderfully diverse set of stories.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780063399808
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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BOOK REVIEW
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