A promising opening scene devolves into an often confusing journey through contemporary conflicts in Indonesian politics.
The residents of Timor struggle with the legacy of their colonial past.
In the opening scene, male residents of the town of Oetimu on the island of Timor, formerly a colony of both the Netherlands and Portugal, gather to watch the finals of the 1998 World Cup. As they grumble over Brazil’s unexpected defeat by France, they’re unaware that a murderous gang holds the wife and children of one of the town’s most prominent residents hostage, awaiting his return. After that ominous introduction, Nesi’s novel, originally published in Indonesia in 2018, devolves mostly into loosely linked accounts of the lives of a handful of characters connected to the town, some in only marginal ways. Among them is Sergeant Ipi, a brutally corrupt police officer who’s born there when his mother—the daughter of a Portuguese diplomat who was taken prisoner and raped by Indonesian soldiers—stumbles into the town after escaping her captors. He’s raised by Am Siki, a man distinguished for his storytelling talent, who fought the Japanese when they occupied the island during World War II. On the night of the soccer match, Ipi is anticipating his implausible marriage to Silvy, a beautiful, brilliant young woman with her own history of sexual violence, some of it at the hands of a morally bankrupt priest. Although a translator’s afterword provides some history of the period that culminates in the overthrow of Indonesia’s Suharto regime in 1998, the novel will be hard going for any reader not at least reasonably familiar with these events. A list of acronyms identifies eight political parties or other groups in whose activities various characters participate, but this offers, at best, minimal context to foreign readers. A few scenes in the magical realist style come as a welcome diversion, but despite a handful of startling moments, the novel’s plodding pace robs it of most of its narrative tension until it comes full circle in its final pages.
A promising opening scene devolves into an often confusing journey through contemporary conflicts in Indonesian politics.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781953861986
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.
Scottoline’s latest links her great love of Italy with her long record of female-centered crime fiction.
Julia Pritzker has a presentiment that something terrible is around the corner, but she never imagines just how terrible: When her husband, Philadelphia attorney Mike Shallette, tries to protect her from a man who grabs her designer bag, he gets stabbed to death before her eyes. Julia’s grief becomes laced with guilt when she realizes that her daily horoscope had predicted a calamity she’s now convinced she could have prevented. The news from Italian attorney Massimiliano Lombardi that his late client has left her millions in cash and an estate worth nearly as much again doesn’t comfort her, but it does provide distraction—especially since she’s never heard of Emilia Rossi and has no idea why she’s been chosen as her heir. Since Julia, adopted at an early age by a couple who’ve been dead for years, wonders if Emilia might have been her biological grandmother, she travels to Chianti in hope of recovering some of Emilia’s DNA. Unfortunately, caretakers Anna Mattia Vesta and Piero Fano have burned all of Emilia’s clothing and personal items on her orders, so there’s nothing left to test. Growing convinced that the stars are directing her and that her history is rooted in Emilia’s decrepit house, Julia turns down repeated offers for the property and resolves to secure evidence confirming the relationship between Emilia and her. Now all she has to do is protect herself from the shadowy figures tracking and following her and recover from a series of vivid, hallucinatory nightmares that seem to be the cost of claiming her heritage.
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781538769997
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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