Completing the trajectory of her early triumphs with a pandemic masterpiece, Wolitzer takes our breath away.
Thirteen timeless stories of what goes on between men and women, grounded in an optimism that is no stranger to sorrow.
Ninety-one-year-old Wolitzer, author of five novels and mother of Meg, collects for the first time her stories from the 1960s and '70s, many first published in Esquire, Ms., and elsewhere, and adds a brand new one from 2020. A foreword by Elizabeth Strout alerts us to the particular joys of Wolitzer's prose style and storytelling—how she "leaves enough spaces between the lines" for us to "enter the story with our own experiences and therefore make it our own." After the crystalline title story zips us straight back to the mad housewife era and a second introduces the centrality of female desire in Wolitzer's work, there's a run of seven narrated by Paulette, or Paulie as her husband, Howard, calls her. Full of the pleasures of intimacy, these are unusually happy stories about a complicated marriage. No matter that it begins with an unplanned pregnancy; weathers infidelity, an extended visit from Howard's first wife, and the appearance of a sex maniac in the building ("about time," thinks Paulie); and tackles her insomnia and his depression (usually responsive to a day spent driving around to visit model homes). "Why am I so happy?" wonders Paulie. "I know the same bad things Howard knows." Spoiled as we are by the tonic power of Paulie's worldview, it's an adjustment to embrace three grimmer stories that follow. But wait—in an amazing grand finale, Wolitzer brings Paulie and Howard back a half-century later, reckoning with the usual dirty tricks of old age. "Howard, who had once been so gorgeous," is now "grizzled and paunchy and gray," but Paulie is still Paulie: Where she used to check her husband's side of the bed upon waking for "a promising rise in the bedclothes," she now rejoices in the simple evidence of breath. It seemed like the world “would all go on forever in that exquisitely boring and beautiful way. But of course it wouldn't." And along comes the novel coronavirus to do its worst.
Completing the trajectory of her early triumphs with a pandemic masterpiece, Wolitzer takes our breath away.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63557-762-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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