by Heidi Pitlor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 18, 2020
Both the story and its resourceful heroine are fresh, intelligent, and charming.
Ghostwriting for celebrity clients yields more drama than income for a desperate single mom.
“Let me guess: you live in Brooklyn….You went to Vassar or maybe Oberlin….You got your MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop….You shop at Whole Foods.” The feminist political powerhouse Lana Breban and her people think they know all about Allie Lang, who’s traveled by bus from her shabby rented house in Western Massachusetts to discuss the latest snag in their memoir project—but they have her all wrong. About the only things Allie shares with the bougie hipster they imagine her to be are liberal politics and feminism. Allie is a single mother by choice and is raising her son, Cass, almost completely alone except for occasional help from her wandering hippie boyfriend and a nearly senile neighbor. Her last ghostwriting job, the memoir of a high-profile bro from the video game world, was to be so well paid she had planned a trip to Disney World with Cass—but then the book got cancelled due to an avalanche of sexual harassment allegations against its subject. Her cupboard is bare and the rent is overdue when she’s hired to write a book for Lana, a fierce advocate for women’s rights who’s on her way to elected office. The problem is, the book is supposed to be a warm and fuzzy memoir of motherhood, and Lana has been far too busy with her career to do much hands-on parenting at all. She has a staff for that. The heartwarming stories her agent, publisher, and political team are looking for simply don’t exist. What’s Allie supposed to do, substitute her own experiences? Pitlor’s third novel is set during the lead-up to and the aftermath of the 2016 election; she dryly and sometimes poignantly channels the zeitgeist through nuanced characters, settings, and just-right details.
Both the story and its resourceful heroine are fresh, intelligent, and charming.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-791-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More by Anthony Doerr
BOOK REVIEW
edited by Anthony Doerr & Heidi Pitlor
BOOK REVIEW
edited by Roxane Gay with Heidi Pitlor
BOOK REVIEW
edited by Lorrie Moore & Heidi Pitlor
by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
42
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2022
New York Times Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Share your opinion of this book
More by Barbara Kingsolver
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
by Elin Hilderbrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2023
The people in her books may screw up, but Hilderbrand always gets it right. Kind of amazing.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2023
New York Times Bestseller
A dreamy Nantucket house party given by a meticulous hostess goes off the rails.
“When Hollis posts a potato and white cheddar tart with a crispy bacon crust, her foodie community breaks the one-million-member milestone. (Leave it to bacon!)” And leave it to Hilderbrand, in her 30th book of Nantucket-based fiction, to cook up more literary bacon, this time focusing on female friendship, female “friendship,” and the power of the internet and social media. When Hollis Shaw's doctor husband dies in a crash on the way to the airport, she steps back from Hungry With Hollis, her popular website. After moping around her house in “Swellesley” for a while, she returns to Nantucket for the summer, planning a kick-out-the-stops weekend party that will involve one girlfriend from each phase of her life—youth, college, motherhood—plus her favorite internet follower, an Atlanta-based airline pilot, whom she's never actually met. Two of these old pals are definitely not as close to Hollis as they once were, one of them has done her secret harm, and Hollis dramatically increases the potential for trouble by paying her angry 20-something daughter to document the weekend on film. Add two bottles each of Casa Dragones tequila, Triple 8 vodka, and Veuve Clicquot, plus some Hendricks gin and Mount Gay rum—what could possibly go wrong? Known for gently inserting social commentary into her plots, Hilderbrand here highlights the ridiculous fickleness of cancel culture when one of the characters—Dru-Ann, an extremely successful Black sports agent—almost loses her clients, her job, and her boyfriend when a video clip of a private conversation in a restaurant is posted on social media. Everyone says there's no way forward without a self-effacing apology. Dru-Ann says pass the Casa Dragones. Meanwhile, Hollis is about to learn that friendships forged on the internet are not always what they seem. Hilderbrand has announced plans to retire in 2024. Wait—that's next year! No!
The people in her books may screw up, but Hilderbrand always gets it right. Kind of amazing.Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780316258777
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elin Hilderbrand
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.