An arresting debut that impresses more than it moves.
An Irishwoman avoids dealing with her cancer diagnosis in this debut novel.
When Sinéad Hynes, a property developer and mother of three boys, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she keeps the news of her illness to herself. She avoids telling her husband, Alex, that she's ill even after she has been hospitalized and refuses to let her children visit her. Instead of lingering on her own mortality, Sinéad spends her time in the ward observing her fellow patients. Chief among them are Margaret Rose, who manages her daughter’s pregnancy from bed, and Jane, who suffers from dementia and recalls a friend’s troubled pregnancy from decades earlier. As Sinéad’s health grows worse, however, her efforts to avoid her family and the reality of her situation become increasingly difficult. There is much to admire and respect in this debut novel from Feeney, also an accomplished poet, but also much that even readers who enjoy a challenge will find frustrating. Feeney is obviously an immensely gifted writer, with a gift for both dialogue and inner monologue: In one striking passage, Sinéad rationalizes lying to Alex by telling herself, “It was a dreadfully selfish thing to do to another person, fill him up with worry and uncertainty, to try and make him figure out death, because that’s a dead end, a spiral, even though it’s always there, inside us all.” But her denial about her condition, even to herself, can make her feel like a device for Feeney’s considerable linguistic pyrotechnics rather than an emotionally engaging character in her own right. Though the female body is powerfully described in this novel, by avoiding the specifics of Sinéad’s cancer diagnosis, Feeney renders cancer a symbolic bogeyman instead of a disease.
An arresting debut that impresses more than it moves.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77196-443-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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