Call your book club: This symphonic debut is your next read.
A biracial teenager longs for a different future as she faces her family’s past and the buried secrets of her hometown.
“When you have a terrible thing happen that everyone knows about,” 16-year-old Diamond Newberry tells us, “you can be laid out flat by anyone.” It’s 1987 and she’s stuck in Swift River, a decaying New England mill town, laid out flat by just about everyone. At nearly 300 pounds and the only person of color in town, Diamond has been lonely most of her life. The “terrible thing” that hangs over her is her father Rob’s mysterious disappearance in 1980. Rob, who is Black, had been the subject of police scrutiny in the time just before his sneakers were found by the riverside, and Diamond struggles to separate rumors of his fate from fact. Since seven years have passed, Diamond’s mother, Annabelle, who is white, tries to get Rob declared legally dead in order to receive desperately needed life insurance money. But when a letter for Diamond arrives from Rob’s cousin, Diamond realizes how disconnected she’s felt from her father’s family and her “people,” having grown up hearing whispers about a single night in the early 20th century known as “The Leaving,” when all the Black mill workers planned to flee Swift River en masse. Chambers toggles between 1980 and 1987, while also immersing readers, via family letters, in Swift River Valley circa 1915, to tell a coming-of-age story that shows that our entry into adulthood carries with it all the weight of our family history and that of the places we come from. Despite a somewhat inelegant handling of Diamond’s weight, this novel’s assured plotting and emotional resonance should render it a breakout book.
Call your book club: This symphonic debut is your next read.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781668027912
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.
A British widow travels to Ibiza and learns that it’s never too late to have a happy life.
In a world that seems to be getting more unstable by the moment, Haig’s novels are a steady ship in rough seas, offering a much-needed positive message. In works like the bestselling The Midnight Library (2020), he reminds us that finding out what you truly love and where you belong in the universe are the foundations of building a better existence. His latest book continues this upbeat messaging, albeit in a somewhat repetitive and facile way. Retired British schoolteacher Grace Winters discovers that an old acquaintance has died and left her a ramshackle home in Ibiza. A widow who lost her only child years earlier, Grace is at first reluctant to visit the house, because, at 72, she more or less believes her chance for happiness is over—but when she rouses herself to travel to the island, she discovers the opposite is true. A mystery surrounds her friend’s death involving a roguish islander, his activist daughter, an internationally famous DJ, and a strange glow in the sea that acts as a powerful life force and upends Grace’s ideas of how the cosmos works. Framed as a response to a former student’s email, the narrative follows Grace’s journey from skeptic (she was a math teacher, after all) to believer in the possibility of magic as she learns to move on from the past. Her transformation is the book’s main conflict, aside from a protest against an evil developer intent on destroying Ibiza’s natural beauty. The outcome is never in doubt, and though the story often feels stretched to the limit—this novel could have easily been a novella—the author’s insistence on the power of connection to change lives comes through loud and clear.
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593489277
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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