A clever work with an intriguing format and a memorable protagonist.
In Chesley’s comic novel, a California man with Asperger syndrome chronicles his emancipation in online reviews.
Marcus Katz has a lot of opinions, and he’s putting them all on Yelp. He loves the fish tacos at Tacos Baja Ensanada, and Jonathan’s Steam Cleaning is good at getting stains out of a carpet, though Marcus is not a fan of the smell of the deodorant they use. These opinions are not the reason his Yelp reviews are starting to go viral, however; it’s because of the 22-year-old’s tendency to include bits of autobiography in his reviews. Marcus’ mother just died, offering him the opportunity to review the Cedars-Sinai cafeteria and Palisades Mortuary, and his older sister, Lisa, forces him into a conservatorship: “Like a lot of people, she acts like Asperger’s is somehow related to being stupid,” Marcus notes. “In fact Aspies are statistically of medium to high intelligence. I won’t tell you what I am. I will let you decide.” When the judge-appointed conservator tries to push Marcus into a group home, he flees with his dog, Sadie, leaving a breadcrumb trail of Yelp reviews and making himself a cause célèbre in the process. Chesley believably crafts Marcus’ earnest reviewing voice as well as that of his Yelp friend, Durinda Dowling, who also has Asperger. He notes one of their interactions in a hotel review: “A sign by the driveway in front said ‘15 minute check-in parking only’….Inside she asked me if I wanted to come up, but I had already parked for a minute and a half and I didn’t want to get a ticket so I said no.” Overall, it’s a fun conceit, and although Marcus’ unwavering Yelp persona at times becomes a bit tedious, the book’s zippy pacing and short length keep the novel moving along at a brisk pace. Marcus’ story also raises intriguing questions about the nature of conservatorship while demonstrating the ways that people form communities online—and how these can spill over into one’s personal life.
A clever work with an intriguing format and a memorable protagonist.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-78904-982-4
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Roundfire Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A ghost story, a love story, a mystery—this seductive novel has it all.
A haunted house full of haunted people is the setting for this lively, moving tale.
When 15-year-old Sana Malek and her widowed father move from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Durban in 2014, they land in a once-glorious mansion overlooking the sea, now a ramshackle rooming house presided over by a kindly old man called Doctor. Sana is familiar with ghosts, having been haunted all her life by the spiteful ghost of her previously conjoined twin sister, who died soon after they were separated. So she recognizes that the house teems with them. She forms tentative bonds with some of the place’s corporeal residents, a group of contentious older women. But she’s more interested in the departed, and she begins to unravel their stories, especially when she finds a long-locked bedroom with diaries and photos that are evidence of a couple in love. In 1919, we learn in the book’s second timeline, a dashing, wealthy young Muslim man named Akbar Ali Khan left his village in Gujarat. Eventually he settled in Durban, following an arranged marriage in India with his modern Anglophile wife, Jahanara Begum. They have a son and daughter, but their marriage never warms, despite the spectacular house and gardens he builds for them. Then he does fall in love, with a Tamil girl hired to work in his sugar factory. Meena rejects him, but he takes her as another wife anyway, patiently winning her over until their love catches fire. Akbar isn’t the only one in love with Meena; the djinn of the title, an ancient creature weary of the world, is enchanted. But Jahanara’s bitter jealousy of Meena will lead them all to a terrible fate. Almost a century later, Sana will put it all together—but will that bring catastrophe? Khan’s prose is lush and lovely, her pacing skillful, and she successfully weaves a complex plot with a large cast.
A ghost story, a love story, a mystery—this seductive novel has it all.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593653456
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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