A philosophically stimulating novel crackling with emotional liveliness.
In Fletcher’s novel, a teenager learns he will die at the age of 27 and struggles to forge meaning in his brief life.
As soon as Daniel Brooker turns 18 years old, he heads to the Department of Designated Dates to find out when he will die of natural causes; in this peculiar alternate reality provocatively conjured by the author, anyone can procure this information (a technological instrument called a “gizmotron” makes this possible) if they so choose. To his astonishment and despair, Daniel finds out that he will die when he is only 27 years old and commences a life of endless dissipation—a “slow descent into fuckuppery.” Like most “shorters,” he forms friends with his own kind: Naomi is a hippie doomed to die at 25 and Brian is a drug dealer whose life will end at 34. Daniel becomes, in the opinion of his father, a “dumbass with no direction,” an addict lost in the haze of drug abuse, though still heroically clinging to some semblance of moral dignity. The author perspicaciously imagines the kind of world that would arise from this grim knowledge, one split between Gnostics—those who believe one should choose not to know, to avoid the terrible psychic cost of such information—and Watersons, religious zealots who believe an early death is a sure sign of moral turpitude and an expression of God’s disfavor. Daniel descends from a family of Gnostics but feels compelled to know his lifespan nevertheless, and that information proves crushing to him, an invitation to see his existence as essentially pointless (a moral predicament intelligently conveyed by Fletcher).
At the heart of this fascinating novel is the moral meaning of one’s mortality. Everyone in this strange world will perish, but those who expect long lives can postpone a wrenching reflection on their finitude. Shorters like Daniel are not afforded such luxury; unable to cope at so young an age with such weighty issues, he devotes himself to chasing oblivion. The allure of knowing, the author makes clear, is overwhelming, but the consequences can be existentially devastating. Fletcher poignantly captures Daniel’s unenviable plight; here, he succumbs to sadness when Naomi dies on schedule: “I felt so insignificant. I am so tired of being alive. The fucking rat race. We’re just a bunch of worthless fucks scraping for meaning in a cold remorseless world. Holding onto each other as we disparate. Searching for meaning where there is none.” This literarily plain, even cliched writing style is maintained throughout the entire novel—the absence of any poetic spark is the principal failing of this otherwise stirring work. The tale is told from Daniel’s perspective, in the first person, and so this ends up working—he sounds just like any wounded young man would, if more intelligent than most. In place of stylized prose, a verisimilitude is impressively achieved. A thoughtful rumination on human mortality is achieved as well, one that cannily investigates the wages of too much knowledge.
A philosophically stimulating novel crackling with emotional liveliness.Pub Date: April 19, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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