An ambitious and heartfelt debut.
As Atlanta prepares for the 1996 Olympics, two young Black men deal with challenges at work and in their personal lives.
Jacob is a Brooklyn native, staying on in Atlanta after graduating from Morehouse to take a job with a real estate developer who has won the contract to “revitaliz[e]” (aka destroy and gentrify) the Black neighborhoods near the Olympic Village. He knows he’s gay, but has had very little experience and has not come out to his parents. He works closely with Daniel, an Atlanta native whose white mother has recently died without ever having explained to him how he is Black while his siblings and her husband are all white. Daniel, too, is dealing with confusion about his sexuality. As the book lays it out, in characteristically passionate prose, “Was a life—this life—between two Black men possible? Two Black men in love and protecting each other against whatever was out there in the world, moving together toward an unknown future?” The dual aspirations of this debut novel—to create a detailed, fact-based portrait of Atlanta on the cusp of change and to depict the pressures on gay Black men coming of age in the 1990s—are both realized, the former with detailed research about the specific neighborhoods involved, the latter with intense dramatic situations and inner monologues. Anger breaks through in fistfights, verbal showdowns, and a near-riot. Sometimes, the author seems not to trust us to keep the stakes and the big picture in mind. In the middle of a conversation with a new man in his life, Jacob begins ruminating on “the conversation that lurked just beneath their discussion” and “the unvoiced masculinity code,” themes already strongly articulated in the novel. During a tense meeting in the school principal’s office about a teacher who has made a remark about Daniel’s parentage, obviously different than his siblings’, it occurs to Daniel’s mother that “life roamed beyond them in that office—wild, reckless, unpredictably wonderful and unexpected. Life, large and sweeping, filled with gasps of intensity and excitement.” These are lovely observations but seem unlikely to have occurred to her in the moment. Another issue is that Jacob and Daniel’s boss, a white woman, is a two-dimensional villain, though her portrayal is explicitly linked to “the history of what little Black boys and little white girls have always been told about each other.”
An ambitious and heartfelt debut.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781668016282
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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