A thoughtful literary novel exploring the shadows of cultural identity and the mirage of assimilation.
A “Pandora’s box of the whys” has earned Anna Sinclair, a Caribbean-American immigrant, the position of editor of Equiano, a specialty imprint of Windsor, a New York publishing house.
But Anna is divorced, nearing 40, coping with an ailing mother and facing complications at work. In Nunez’s (Anna In-Between, 2009, etc.) latest, the author further explores immigrant life, a life where a hard-working woman can progress up the corporate ladder, buy an apartment in a soon-to-be trendy neighborhood, and still be plagued by outsider’s angst. The story begins with Anna, edits completed on a promising literary novel, visiting her home island. She finds her mother refusing medical attention for obvious breast cancer. Anna pressures her to seek care. Eventually the case comes to Paul Bishop, a family friend and now a prominent surgeon in New Jersey. Paul agrees to perform the operation if Anna’s mother agrees to have it done off-island. Paul also persuades Anna that they might find a personal connection. Anna’s intrigued, but she is anxious about mother’s condition and stressed by dramatic changes at work, including a new “assistant editor” hired without her input. The book expands to follow Anna into the jungle of modern-day publishing. After promises and subterfuge, the new hire, Tim Greene, an African-American with an unconventional childhood, becomes her boss. He closes her specialty imprint, making clear he believes her heritage leaves her disconnected audiences who want “chick-lit” and “ghetto-lit.” Anna feels lost, trapped by cultural discrimination. She grows as a sympathetic character, and the author brings her reticent British-black culture parents to life as they travel to the U.S., cope with surgery, reveal themselves. Anna begins to understand her parents’ love for her in spite of their reserved nature, and she finds their wisdom, and Paul’s love, key to coping with the discrimination she faces at work.
A thoughtful literary novel exploring the shadows of cultural identity and the mirage of assimilation.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61775-033-5
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
A book about triumphing over obstacles, and obstacles, and obstacles, and more obstacles.
An aimless young man decides to get his life together, but life has other plans.
Mike Muñoz doesn’t quite know what he wants out of life, but he knows he deserves better than what he’s got now: a terrible job cutting lawns, a truck that barely runs, and a tiny house packed with a disabled brother, an exhausted mother, and his mother’s broke boyfriend who likes to watch porn in the living room while jamming on his bass guitar. Soon enough, however, he doesn’t even have the job or the truck, and, in an ill-fated attempt to guilt-trip his mom into kicking out her boyfriend, Mike takes up residence in a shed in the backyard. Despite the steady stream of bad luck and worse decisions, Evison (This Is Your Life Harriet Chance, 2015, etc.) brings genuine humor to Mike's trials and tribulations. The writing is razor-sharp, and Evison has an unerring eye for the small details that snap a scene or a character into focus. The first-person narration turns Mike into a living, breathing person, and the reader can’t help but get pulled into his worldview. “After all, most of us are mowing someone else’s lawn, one way or another, and most of us can’t afford to travel the world or live in New York City. Most of us feel like the world is giving us a big fat middle finger when it’s not kicking us in the face with a steel-toed boot. And most of us feel powerless. Motivated but powerless.” The novel has a light tone and is laugh-out-loud funny at times, but at a certain point, Mike's trials and tribulations move from comically frustrating to just frustrating. With so much going wrong for him, the reader can expect that the universe will smile on Mike eventually, but there’s only so many sick family members, unpaid bills, bad jobs, awkward situations, and thwarted plans a character can suffer through. We root for Mike while also wishing we didn’t have to root so hard.
A book about triumphing over obstacles, and obstacles, and obstacles, and more obstacles.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61620-262-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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Although the author acknowledges in a postscript that his story is perhaps “too episodic,” his life of Sam Hell is inspiring...
Quite a departure from Dugoni’s dark novels about Detective Tracy Crosswhite (The Trapped Girl, 2017, etc.): the frankly inspirational tale of a boy who overcomes the tremendous obstacles occasioned by the color of his eyes.
Samuel James Hill is born with ocular albinism, a rare condition that makes his eyes red. Dubbed “the devil boy” by his classmates at Our Lady of Mercy, the Catholic school his mother, Madeline, fights to get him into, he faces loneliness, alienation, and daily ridicule, especially from David Freemon, a merciless bully who keeps finding new ways to torment him, and Sister Beatrice, the school’s principal and Freemon’s enabler, who in her own subtler ways is every bit as vindictive as he is. Only the friendship of two other outsiders, African-American athlete Ernie Cantwell and free-spirited nonconformist Michaela Kennedy, allows him to survive his trying years at OLM. In high school, Sam finds that nearly every routine milestone—the tryouts for the basketball team, the senior prom, the naming of the class valedictorian—represents new challenges. Even Sam’s graduation is blasted by a new crisis, though this one isn’t rooted in his red eyes. Determined to escape from the Bay Area suburb of Burlingame, he finds himself meeting the same problems, often embodied in the very same people, over and over. Yet although he rejects his mother’s unwavering faith in divine providence, he triumphs in the end by recognizing himself in other people and assuming the roles of the friends and mentors who helped bring him to adulthood. Dugoni throws in everything but a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and then adds that trip as well.
Although the author acknowledges in a postscript that his story is perhaps “too episodic,” his life of Sam Hell is inspiring and aglow with the promise of redemption.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5039-4900-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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