A universal story about sibling tensions infused with plenty of history.
Three siblings are buffeted by family drama, culture, and history in Guadeloupe.
Bulle’s debut novel is framed around a young woman seeking to understand the lives of her father, known to his family as Petit-Frère, and her aunts, Lucinde and Antoine. Some of the disruption is a function of colonization: France’s possession of the Antillean archipelago is at once a source of social identity (Antoine long aspired to own a shop in Paris) and division, leading to a violent clash between police and citizens in 1967. There are cultural challenges too, as the siblings are mixed-race, complicating their status in a closed and class-conscious society. And then there is simple family drama—in alternating narratives, the siblings debate the causes of various incidents in Rashomon-like fashion. (Antoine’s urge to leave her impoverished home at 16 was either rash or necessary, depending on who’s talking.) Antoine calls the place “this little island where immorality reigns,” and the novel’s title refers to the backwardness of the family’s hometown. Still, Bulle conveys a deep sense of affection for the place in all its frustrations; translator Grawemeyer includes thoughtful, unobtrusive footnotes about Guadeloupean history and folklore while preserving much of the flavor of the original French and Creole in the text itself. So the novel’s flaws are largely matters of structure: Splitting the voices across the three siblings and Petit-Frère’s daughter diffuses the narrative, which at its heart is about Antoine’s struggles. But Antoine's thread feels clipped; there's a truncated subplot involving diamond smuggling and moments of magical realism that pass without much development, while Lucinde’s stints as a clothing designer or Petit-Frère’s as a jazz-loving soldier get shorter shrift. As a portrait of a nation that’s received little attention, it’s fascinating, but as a story it struggles to find its footing.
A universal story about sibling tensions infused with plenty of history.Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-3742-8909-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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
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