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THE DAMAGES

A compelling character study that tackles intriguing moral questions.

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Scott’s novel combines a mystery plot with an exploration of college culture in the 1990s.

After feeling invisible during her high school career, Rosalind “Ros” Fisher is desperate to be a part of the “cool” crowd at Regis University, near Toronto, in 1998. To that end, she ditches her authentic self, invents a new persona, and excludes her “uncool” roommate, Megan Main, who has horse-print bedsheets and out-of-date clothes, from her life. Shortly after Ros returns to campus from winter break, a dangerous ice storm hits, forcing the college to lock down. A reckless night out ends with Megan missing and Ros the target of her peers’ blame. As lies pile up, Ros finds it increasingly difficult to maintain her credibility. The aftermath of this incident uproots her life, disconnecting her from everyone she knows at Regis. Over the course of Scott’s novel, Ros makes morally questionable decisions, but what she lacks in likability is made up for by Scott’s realistic representation of an insecure young person, via Ros’ narration. Small specificities, such as dormitory names, clothing choices, and ’90s references (“Why would anyone want to be one of the many? Another ponytailed, poli-sci major with an unironic passion for Jewel”) do an excellent job of creating a vivid, believable setting. Indeed, this aspect of the novel, along with the conversational tone, will make readers feel closer to Ros as she reflects on her past. In the book’s second half, the story seamlessly transitions to 20 years in the future, as a news story forces Ros to reexamine someone else’s past behavior as well as confront her own previous actions. Overall, it’s a thought-provoking examination of truth, trauma, and memory, briskly and attentively presenting readers with a vivid portrait of one woman’s complicated experiences.

A compelling character study that tackles intriguing moral questions.

Pub Date: July 25, 2023

ISBN: 978-1039004924

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023

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INTERMEZZO

Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.

Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.

Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.

Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024

ISBN: 9780374602635

Page Count: 464

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024

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PLAYGROUND

An engaging, eloquent message for this fragile planet.

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  • Kirkus Prize
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  • New York Times Bestseller

A story of friendship, technology, oceans, and a small island.

Powers juggled nine lead characters in The Overstory (2018), his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Here he wrangles just four, but the result is almost as complicated. Two nerdish boys, Rafi Young and Todd Keane, bond in high school over chess and Go. In college, Rafi falls in love with Ina Aroita, a Hawaii-born Navy brat whose mother is Tahitian. The men fall out shortly after brainstorming over Todd’s idea for a computer game called Playground. This strand of the novel is told in retrospect by Todd at age 57, addressing an unidentified “you,” after he receives a diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies; he’s an unreliable narrator in more than one way. Interspersed are scenes in later years on the French Polynesian island of Makatea, scarred by phosphate mining and down to a population of 82, including Rafi and Ina and the novel’s fourth lead, an elderly Canadian scuba diver named Evelyne Beaulieu. Her lifelong love of the diversity and preciousness of aquatic life provides the book’s other narrative strand and its environmental theme. Through Todd, Powers sketches the computer and social media revolutions, from early coding to gaming to AI. The counterpoint to this high-tech history is Makatea, a paradise lost to industrial mining that decades later must decide whether to accept a consortium’s lucrative proposal to use the island to build floating autonomous cities. This is a challenging novel, fragmented but compelling, with fine writing on friendship and its loss and on the awe and delight the ocean inspires. Along with its environmental warnings, the book carries an intriguing look at the ways people and animals play, as in the boys’ competitive chess, the antics of manta rays, the allure of computer games, and what a meta-minded author might do with his readers.

An engaging, eloquent message for this fragile planet.

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024

ISBN: 9781324086031

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024

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