Schulman (P.S., 2004, etc.) succeeds in creating an identifiable emotional landscape out of an incomprehensible tragedy.
On September 11, a Manhattan family escapes to the Hamptons as the Twin Towers fall.
Gerhard and Suzannah Falktopf are a famously bohemian downtown couple—he a German émigré and world-renowned choreographer, she a Bronx ballerina and his muse of many years. They live in an art-filled loft with their four-year-old son Nikolai, but all is not well with the family. Gerhard’s dance company (and perhaps the copyright to his choreography) has been usurped by the company’s board of directors, and Suzannah is preoccupied with Nikolai (who shows signs of autism) and the judgment of the other mothers in the park. The day’s early-morning hours are spent carrying out routines and dealing with petty irritations. Gerhard is arguing on the phone with his lawyer; Suzannah is caring for Nikolai; Celine, their beautiful and inept au pair, is sleeping off another night of partying. And then through their window they see the first tower on fire. To Schulman’s credit, the lengthy description of their shock and incredulity as the horror unfolds is at once familiar and fresh. Gerhard insists on leaving the city immediately and heads for the bank and their car. While withdrawing money, he stumbles upon a vacationing French woman, Martine, and her infant cowering in the corner; her husband was going to the World Trade Center, and now she fears the worst. He takes her with them, and the dumbstruck group head for a borrowed house in the Hamptons. The beach is beautiful, the locals are dazed and Suzannah and Gerhard go their separate ways for this fateful day, he attending to Martine, Suzannah confronting Nikolai’s disability and the future of her marriage. A largely interior novel, the almost unbroken narrative moves from exposition to the events of the day, from the reflective to the frantic, resulting in a compelling portrait of the vain Falktopfs confronting something more important than their own self-indulgent concerns.
Schulman (P.S., 2004, etc.) succeeds in creating an identifiable emotional landscape out of an incomprehensible tragedy.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-618-74654-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
An engaging, inclusive debut.
A young woman with cognitive disabilities finds inspiration in Viking legends and prepares herself to become a hero when her brother gets involved with drug dealers.
Zelda knows she’s different than most people she meets, and she understands that difference is because of something called fetal alcohol syndrome. She has seen the unkind glances and heard the muttered slurs, but really, she just wants what any 21-year-old wants: love, acceptance, and some degree of independence to make decisions about her life. Also? A really good sword would be useful. Zelda is obsessed with Vikings—their legends, their fierce loyalty, their courage in the face of danger. Like the ancient clans, she finds strength in her tribe: her older brother, Gert, and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, AK47, plus her helpful therapist and her friends at the community center, especially her boyfriend, Marxy. He isn’t the best kisser, but he’s willing to try sex, a subject about which Zelda is definitely curious. But when Gert struggles to pay the bills and gets involved with dangerous drug dealers, Zelda knows she has to step in and help him whatever the cost. “The hero in a Viking legend is always smaller than the villain,” she reasons. “That is what makes it a legend.” In this engaging debut novel, MacDonald skillfully balances drama and violence with humor, highlighting how an unorthodox family unit is still a family. He’s never condescending, and his frank examination of the real issues facing cognitively disabled adults—sexuality, employment, independence—is bracing and compassionate. With Zelda, he’s created an unforgettable character, one whose distinctive voice is entertaining and inspiring. Will appeal to fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
An engaging, inclusive debut.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2676-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
There are moments of literary experimentation worthy of Virginia Woolf here, but in the end, this reads more like notes for...
Scenes from a marriage, sometimes lyrical, sometimes philosophically rich, sometimes just puzzling.
If Rainer Maria Rilke had written a novel about marriage, it might look something like this: a series of paragraphs, seldom exceeding more than a dozen lines, sometimes without much apparent connection to the text on either side. The story is most European, too; says the narrator, “I spent my afternoons in a city park, pretending to read Horace. At dusk, people streamed out of the Métro and into the street. In Paris, even the subways are required to be beautiful.” Well, oui. The principal character is “the wife,” nameless but not faceless, who enters into a relationship and then marriage with all the brave hope attendant in the enterprise. Offill (Last Things, 1999, etc.) is fond of pointed apothegms (“Life equals structure plus activity”) and reflections in the place of actual action, but as the story progresses, it’s clear that events test that hope—to say nothing of hubby’s refusal at first to pull down a decent salary, so the young family finds itself “running low on money for diapers and beer and potato chips.” Material conditions improve, but that hope gets whittled away further with the years, leading to moments worthy of a postmodern version of Diary of a Mad Housewife: “The wife is reading Civilization and Its Discontents, but she keeps getting lost in the index.” The fragmented story, true though it may be to our splintered, too busy lives, is sometimes hard to follow, and at times, the writing is precious, even if we’re always pulled back into gritty reality: “I reach my hand into the murky water, fiddle with the drain. When I pull it back out, my hand is scummed with grease.”
There are moments of literary experimentation worthy of Virginia Woolf here, but in the end, this reads more like notes for a novel than a novel itself.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-35081-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
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