A delightful read; smooth as ice cream on a hot summer day.
Giovanni Talamini makes a decision to “break with the family tradition” by walking away from the ice cream business that his great-grandfather Giuseppe began.
In the late 1800s, Giuseppe found his life’s passion, gathering snow from the mountains and creating rich ice cream. Thus begins a business that churns through the lives of four generations of the Talamini family. Giuseppe’s son loved to invent things, but he sublimated his desire and assumed his intended role as ice cream maker. Later, his two sons, Giovanni and Luca, are expected to enter the family business. Giovanni distances himself and heads to college; later he travels the world as director of the World Poetry Festival. Luca remains in the business, finding his passion (or is it a diversion?) in creating unique flavors. In the end, Luca’s son must decide what his role in the family will be. In his U.S. debut, Dutch novelist van der Kwast artfully strings together a series of chapters that could conceivably be stand-alone short stories into a cohesive whole that shows the impact, for better or worse, that family members can have on each other's lives. Giovanni is narrator, observer, and secret keeper. Characters seem to live in a cloud of separation despite being surrounded by those they love. The ultimate decision as to how each character chooses to live affects present and future generations of their family in ways both expected and unexpected. Poetry and history provide the mortar that binds the story together. Van der Kwast tells his multigenerational tale with great sensitivity, demonstrating through powerful observations the long-term effect of one person’s decision upon others throughout the generations.
A delightful read; smooth as ice cream on a hot summer day.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5939-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: 37 Ink/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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