An insightful reminder of our responsibilities to one another, more important now than ever.
Set in 2018, Benedict’s latest follows a group of women who have sought refuge on the Greek island of Samos.
The book begins with the frantic rescue of an infant found at sea by Hilma, an American tourist recuperating from a mysterious trauma suffered at her home in New York. Switching among Hilma’s perspective and the voices of four refugees living in a sprawling, squalid refugee camp, the novel depicts the crises of each woman. Amina is a 19-year-old who has been recently released from one of Bashar al-Assad’s torturous prisons in Syria, haunted by the past and longing for her mother. Leila, a Syrian widow with two young sons, is desperately trying to locate her daughter, Farah, and infant granddaughter, captured by smugglers in Turkey. Nafisa, a Sudanese woman who has endured civil war, gang rape, and the murder of her family, is suffering from increasingly poor health. Reversing Homer’s Odyssey, Benedict illustrates the obstacles each refugee faces in her quest to leave home, capturing the myriad tragedies that have befallen them in frank but empathetic prose. The stark contrast between the refugees’ stories and Hilma’s attempts—following her “good deed”—to become a savior only exposes the egotism of her mission. The reader is invited to witness both the hostility with which European countries receive Black and brown refugees and the performativity of white guilt. Revealing the ways racism has been systemically encoded in law and the seemingly Sisyphean task of being granted refuge, Benedict interrogates the constructions of race, nationality, and human-made borders. As the roads of the refugees and Hilma converge, the novel comes to an emotional conclusion, reminding us that hope is still to be found in the most desolate of places and prompting the reader to consider why and how we ask a person to prove their own humanity.
An insightful reminder of our responsibilities to one another, more important now than ever.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781636281124
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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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