This noteworthy debut explores a sobering topic with creativity, cleverness, and care.
An imaginative exploration of the long-term unfolding of an abusive marriage.
Knapp’s debut is a kind of thought experiment focusing on the family of a British couple named Cora and Gordon, beginning with the birth of their second child, a boy who is nine years younger than his sister, Maia. In the prologue, it is 1987, and Cora and little Maia are off to the registrar to officially name the baby. Gordon—a respected doctor in the community, though a terrifying, violent tyrant at home—wants him named Gordon. But on the way to town, little Maia suggests he be named Bear, which "sounds all soft and cuddly and kind." The opening chapter shows Cora making three different decisions: In the first section, in a rare act of defiance, she follows Maia’s suggestion. Next, she selects the name she herself most wants: Julian. Then she follows directions: The baby is Gordon. Each of the subsequent chapters—which are all divided into three sections—jumps ahead by seven years, tracking the consequences and implications of Cora’s naming decision until the boy is a 35-year-old man. If the intention and construction of the book are a bit didactic, expressly designed to illustrate and explore the dynamics of domestic abuse, the boldness and thoughtfulness of Knapp’s plotting add complexity and a welcome unpredictability. As supporting characters are added to each storyline, some appearing in just one, others in two or three, and as the main characters develop in different ways in each scenario, the novel’s structure pays off as Knapp intended it to, inviting the reader to think about not just the ripple effects of a single decision and the workings of an abusive family but also about a profound and classic concern of fiction: How things we can predict and/or control in life interact with things we could never have seen coming.
This noteworthy debut explores a sobering topic with creativity, cleverness, and care.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593833902
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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