A set of mesmerizing stories that wraps up way too soon.
This remarkable debut collects a trio of horror tales starring Jewish characters.
Friedl Bamberger, in this book’s title story, lives a comfortable life in Germany before World War II. She revels in the wealth from her father’s successful department store and is perhaps a bit snooty. Her apartment building’s new porter, Henrik, catches her eye, and she’s ecstatic about the possibility of a new romance. However, Henrik’s arrival coincides with unforeseen changes as tenants start to disappear. “The Rebbe’s Prayer is Answered” follows a seemingly disenchanted rebbe in Poland whose loving wife can’t bear children. He pines for a merchant’s 15-year-old daughter and, since he’s unavailable for marriage, goes to disturbing lengths to get what he wants. In “The Jonah,” a new job in Palestine in 1941may allow 16-year-old Cili to escape poverty in Romania. On the voyage over, however, she shares space with a reputedly “anti-Semitic, brutish and resentful” crew. These men soon unleash a horrific assault that leads to a violent end for all involved. Schwartz, who offers all three stories in English and Yiddish, delivers enthralling character-driven tales that gradually darken as they go on. The main characters, for example, are all fascinating—even when don’t evoke any sympathy; Friedl is unabashedly self-centered (as when she plays piano in spite of the downstairs neighbor’s complaints), and the rebbe is loathsome. The author weaves in rich historical particulars, from the political climate of decades past to an account of a real-life incident that inspired one of the tales herein. Smooth, descriptive prose (“And there he is, his wavy hair catching glints of the afternoon sunlight, his powerful arms shoveling mulch in the garden”) makes these short stories fly by. Siewert’s black-and-white pen-and-ink illustrations (one per tale) boast simple but crisp details, including one particularly daunting and bloody image. This exceptional collection’s brevity is sure to leave readers wanting more.
A set of mesmerizing stories that wraps up way too soon.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9789198721997
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Olniansky Tekst Farlag
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.
Could making a movie about the disappearance of five women from an island reawaken an evil presence there?
Five dresses hang from the topmost limbs of an oak on a remote island in a Vermont lake. That memorable image marks a mystery from a century ago, when five women believed to have been part of a commune vanished forever. As this novel opens, another group gathers on the island to make a movie based on that tale. Marin Keane, the narrator, is surprised but thrilled to find herself cast as one of the leads; she’s a struggling actor whose biggest part so far has been “Bridesmaid with Eczema” in a drug commercial, so playing Daisy Rue, whose haunting diary is the basis for the movie’s script, could be a career-making move. Ronan Peters, the writer-director, is talented and, Marin notes, hot. His reason for gathering the cast on the island is a kind of boot-camp rehearsal: They’ll spend a week living there, wearing period clothes, and managing without internet or phone service. Oh, and holding séances. What could go wrong? Marin quickly meets the other women in the cast: regal character actor Julianne Brown, cool and competent Heather Benchley, bratty former Disney star Susie Hutchinson, and, striking awe in all of them, Violet Wright, a much-awarded Meryl Streep-ish figure who will play the woman who brought the others to the island, which she owned. They get to work, but soon enough someone disappears. The book’s plot, like the movie’s script, largely follows Daisy’s journal, and since the reader is supplied with pages-long sections of that journal, there’s not much suspense about what will happen next. There are some effective set pieces, such as the group’s first séance. But in its last quarter, the plot collapses into a muddle of #MeToo vengeance, improbable secrets, and jarring character reveals that is, as Marin says, “the most Scooby-Doo thing I’ve ever heard.”
This thriller’s eerie mood is deflated by a plot with more holes than a Halloween sheet.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798217044092
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
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