An intriguing, chilling collection that demands introspection from its readers.
Llanillo’s bilingual short stories explore the spiritual, macabre, and mundane.
A young woman’s luxurious handkerchief slowly sucks the life out of her; a skeptical man meets his guardian angel that only he can see; an innocuous email from a friend drives a woman to the brink of insanity. These stories and more can be found in this collection by Llanillo, renowned in Latin America for her literary musings on faith, anguish, and death. Most have appeared in her previous anthologies, but this is the first published posthumously and the widest in scope. Each tale is told in English and Spanish, with translations by Martínez and Cooper that offer slightly different tones; Spanish readers will find the stories conveyed with more humor than the English versions. Many entries are quite short, and some would qualify as flash fiction. Llanillo’s spare, measured prose conveys emotion in few words: “Each evening she became a bit more the very axis of his existence. He knew that at ten o’clock, ringing like a flock of doves, the telephone would take over his evening.” With vague, even sinister titles like “Vengeance,” “The Cane,” and “On the Train,” her writing often ruminates on flawed social structures; personal weakness, like machismo or vanity; and unfulfilled desire. While it can be assumed all tales are set in Cuba, where Llanillo was born and died, many make scant mention of place and time. There are ample cliffhangers, last-minute twists to disarm the reader, and multiple bleak endings; some plotlines grow repetitive. Readers looking for deeply shaded characters and complex plots may be underwhelmed; this work is best suited for those who appreciate dark, unadorned metaphorical fiction.
An intriguing, chilling collection that demands introspection from its readers.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-944176-10-5
Page Count: 552
Publisher: Cubanabooks
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.
Dead bodies turn up in the first sentence of the prologue in McFadden’s latest domestic thriller.
The mystery of who died is at the pulsating heart of this propulsive tale. As Chapter 1 begins, Naomi arrives home to find the locks changed on the front door of the gorgeous home she shares with her husband, Jeremy, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy. Jeremy steps out the front door and convinces Naomi to move out while he has their home renovated, a plan Naomi knows nothing about. It’s all a ruse, though, as the next day Jeremy tells her he wants a divorce. Naomi is shellshocked and soon discovers that Jeremy is having an affair with Veronica, a beautiful younger woman. What seems at first like a stereotypical story about a man who leaves his wife turns into something else when Naomi decides she’ll do anything to get Veronica away from Jeremy and Teddy, and Veronica decides to fight for what she thinks she deserves. Fans of stalker novels will cringe with delight as creepy things start to happen. Teddy’s stuffed elephant, a gift from Veronica, is found impaled on a kitchen knife; Naomi suspects Jeremy is gaslighting her and that Veronica tried to poison her. A weird confrontation among Jeremy, Veronica, and Naomi at Teddy’s birthday party, to which Naomi shows up uninvited, is priceless. There are three main characters, and any or all of them may be unreliable narrators. Packing the plot with dark, gasp-inducing twists, McFadden outdoes herself in a story about how highly emotional people engage in risky behavior to get what they want—but in this novel, for better or worse, not everyone will survive.
Trust no one in this over-the-top tale of deception and revenge.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249631
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
BOOK REVIEW
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