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
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.
A chance meeting in a museum unlocks a long-closed door in a family’s past.
Of a piece with her last three novels—Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023)—Patchett’s latest explores the evolution of families over time, romantic secrets, and step-relationships, again giving these topics the wry and tender treatment that is distinctively hers. As it begins, Daphne Fuller’s attentive husband, Jonathan, notices that a man has been following them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At first they chalk it up to the fact that “old guys love [Daphne],” as she told Jonathan decades ago, a notion he has held onto "like a souvenir postcard from another era." But it turns out that, though Daphne doesn’t recognize him, Eddie Triplett is her former stepfather. Like the author herself, as recalled in her 2020 essay “Three Fathers,” Daphne has had three dads. Her biological father, a deep-sea fisherman named Buddy Zabriskie, left the family early; her current stepfather, Lucas Ekker, lives with her mother in retirement in Massachusetts. Ekker is an unprepossessing sort Abby met working as the publicist for his self-help books, Positivity!, Positively Positive!, The Positivity Workbook!, Positive Every Day!, ad infinitum. The man in the museum, Eddie Triplett, was also someone her mother met through her job in publishing, and once Daphne realizes who he is, she remembers that “[their] hearts were forever stitched together.” This is because Daphne and Eddie were in a serious car accident when she was 9 years old, after which her mother immediately divorced him and evicted him from their lives. The details of that accident—among them lies the reason the novel is named after a horse called Whistler—are gradually wheedled out of Daphne by her younger sister, Leda, a clinical psychologist in New York and a reliable source of insight on the narrative’s key issues. “‘You make it sound like I’ve been keeping all this from you, but I’m not,’ [Daphne] said. ‘Who goes through life thinking about what happened when they were nine?’ ‘It’s all people think about,’ Leda said.”
An evocative and moving tribute to the death-defying, heart-opening, infinitely redemptive power of storytelling.Pub Date: June 2, 2026
ISBN: 9780063511637
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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