A contemplative, complex weaving of intersecting generational stories capped by an emotionally satisfying ending.
A retired literature professor experiences real-life drama when aiding his granddaughter’s investigation of a Scottish immigrant who inherited a fortune—and mysteriously disappeared—in Dzahn’s novel.
Widower Francis Wallace, 79, is intrigued when his granddaughter, Adelaide Cohn, reveals that she has agreed to date Carson Smith, a law school classmate who has asked her out. Adelaide lives with Francis in his Manhattan apartment while attending law school in the mid-1990s. Although helpful around the household—she does the cooking—Adelaide is also a bit quiet and closed off. Francis learns from Adelaide’s mother, Olivia, that Adelaide’s college boyfriend died in a tragic incident. Carson becomes a regular dinner guest. Francis disparagingly draws a connection between the unctuous Carson and the grasping Morris Townsend character in Henry James’ novel Washington Square and judges him unworthy of Adelaide. She lets Carson leave for a job in San Francisco without assurances of any feelings greater than friendship. Adelaide immerses herself in part-time casework that includes discovering what happened to Mary MacDonalde, who immigrated to the United States from Scotland in 1904, then disappeared in 1913; any proven descendants of MacDonalde stand to inherit a multimillion-dollar fortune. Francis and Adelaide visit the upstate New York area where Mary worked as a governess, which leads to answers about her fate as well as shocking danger that leads to dramatic new life decisions for Francis and Adelaide.
The author has written an engrossing, richly detailed novel that delves into the minds of characters in a way that Francis, a Henry James scholar, might very well term Jamesian. Jane Austen fans will also enjoy this book’s links to her works, with Francis referencing Pride and Prejudice while discussing with Adelaide “the perils of a Jane Bennet–like manner and the importance of displaying one’s affections forthrightly.” Particularly satisfying are Francis’ Emma-like epiphanies about misjudging people, most notably Carson, as when the former professor takes himself to task: “Why had I not recognized that the young man’s high-society pretensions arose not from snobbery or opportunistic cunning but from the fictions we each construct to soothe our souls?” The book is packed with subplots, including Adelaide’s meetings with people claiming to be MacDonalde’s descendants, Adelaide and Francis’ minding a neighbor’s grandson who has cerebral palsy, and a surprising and somewhat out-of-left-field encounter with a serial killer. Yet these are largely effective grace notes within this well-orchestrated novel. Adelaide’s musings about Mary provide a glimpse into the introverted law student’s interior life; ultimately, however, the novel’s many byroads intersect to bring readers to Francis’ realization that he must engage more fully with other people in his life rather than hide in his world of literary analysis. Dzahn captures this evolution beautifully, with the professor noting, “And if the world of fiction was not as bright a star as before, perhaps the cause of that dimming was not loss but an increased luminescence all around.”
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2021
ISBN: 9781737083429
Page Count: 497
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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