A creative, if thinly veiled, collection that catalogs misgivings about society.
A collection of speculative poems that blends folklore with social commentary.
Binkley explores the tension between otherworldly beings and humans in this book. She provides lexical and historical background on the term “faery,” which is not necessarily the tiny winged creature of popular culture. The first poem’s speaker recounts reading so voraciously that “the volumes would disembody / themselves with exhaustion.” In “The Parapet,” another speaker is chastised by a jeering crowd of people who believe anyone who is alive and awake “is an enormous threat and security issue.” A seamstress speaks truth to power, telling a king and courtiers that they cling to old ideas and too easily dismiss innovative thinkers in “The Visitor in Almost Linen.” “Exactly” tells a tale about how girls were “tricked into heartbreak” so their love “could be sold as liquor in the / faery bars.” In “A Letter Home,” a fairy complains to her sister about how mortals misuse time. An oracle feels burdened by her gift and laments that other girls must suffer the same fate in “Again.” An elderly fairy insists that one must define their identity in “The Old Woman.” In “Parched,” a naiad becomes exasperated when a thirsty man asks her to take him to a deep well and fails to comprehend that she is the source of water. The final poem, “Nights Breathe,” acknowledges that even mortals can occasionally recognize magic in the world. Binkley’s interpretation of humanity through these supernatural perspectives is unique. She uses evocative imagery when describing “a sigh which sounded like an echo in a cave against a body of water” or how “color filled the sky, so pastel and textured as an / easter cardigan.” However, some of the poems are so abstract that they are nearly indecipherable: “I bathe in solutions again which is my habit / more than I bathe in water / to rinse off in magic 8 ball juice.” Readers may grow weary of the speakers’ bitter tone or enjoy a gimlet-eyed view of life’s frustrations.
A creative, if thinly veiled, collection that catalogs misgivings about society.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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