An imaginative and unpredictable time-travel tale.
A debut literary novel in Spanish explores life, death, and faith.
“¿Estoy muerto o dormido?” (“Am I dead or sleeping?”), the protagonist asks at the outset of this tale. Known in the modern world as Uriel Romero, he finds himself in New Mexico in the 1600s. In this time period, he is Diego, a man attached to a Franciscan mission. His goal, or so he is told, is to bring the nearby Apache into the fold of Christianity. In his normal life, Uriel was an aspiring novelist. He was raised Roman Catholic though, as an adult, he became an agnostic. He finds the idea of preaching to the Apache terrifying. He explains, to no avail, that all he wants to do is wake up from this absurd dream. But his life only becomes more bizarre and complicated. Things start out oddly enough (including Uriel’s encountering the angelic sounds of Mahler). Later, the action shifts to other times and places while examining Uriel’s past. Whether Uriel is hearing the mini-Moog of Yes’ Rick Wakeman in his head, learning about karma, or wandering around his small apartment in Ithaca, New York, in 1996, the possibilities are many. Where will Uriel’s strange journey finally come to an end? Moreno’s story is surreal to say the least. One moment, Uriel’s Apache guide, Refugio, is his normal self. Then, in the next instant, he is suddenly speaking Spanish. Refugio is now someone named Doctor Hogan. While such transformations can be startling, they evoke the eerie sense that anything or anyone may be just around the corner. Uriel is the type of ordinary individual stuck in an extraordinary situation whom readers will empathize with. How can a man who has a taste for progressive rock and an urge to write a novel suddenly make do with the life of a 17th-century monk? Never mind the many dangers that abound—or the troubles of Uriel’s personal life. But some conversations prove bland. For instance, when Uriel is told that his karma is in play, his response is a flat “¿Mi karma?” (“My karma?”). Yet the inventive story ultimately delivers an intricate adventure beyond the normal constrictions of time and space.
An imaginative and unpredictable time-travel tale.Pub Date: May 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73-706111-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A warm and winning "When Harry Met Sally…" update that hits all the perfect notes.
A travel writer has one last shot at reconnecting with the best friend she just might be in love with.
Poppy and Alex couldn't be more different. She loves wearing bright colors while he prefers khakis and a T-shirt. She likes just about everything while he’s a bit more discerning. And yet, their opposites-attract friendship works because they love each other…in a totally platonic way. Probably. Even though they have their own separate lives (Poppy lives in New York City and is a travel writer with a popular Instagram account; Alex is a high school teacher in their tiny Ohio hometown), they still manage to get together each summer for one fabulous vacation. They grow closer every year, but Poppy doesn’t let herself linger on her feelings for Alex—she doesn’t want to ruin their friendship or the way she can be fully herself with him. They continue to date other people, even bringing their serious partners on their summer vacations…but then, after a falling-out, they stop speaking. When Poppy finds herself facing a serious bout of ennui, unhappy with her glamorous job and the life she’s been dreaming of forever, she thinks back to the last time she was truly happy: her last vacation with Alex. And so, though they haven’t spoken in two years, she asks him to take another vacation with her. She’s determined to bridge the gap that’s formed between them and become best friends again, but to do that, she’ll have to be honest with Alex—and herself—about her true feelings. In chapters that jump around in time, Henry shows readers the progression (and dissolution) of Poppy and Alex’s friendship. Their slow-burn love story hits on beloved romance tropes (such as there unexpectedly being only one bed on the reconciliation trip Poppy plans) while still feeling entirely fresh. Henry’s biggest strength is in the sparkling, often laugh-out-loud-funny dialogue, particularly the banter-filled conversations between Poppy and Alex. But there’s depth to the story, too—Poppy’s feeling of dissatisfaction with a life that should be making her happy as well as her unresolved feelings toward the difficult parts of her childhood make her a sympathetic and relatable character. The end result is a story that pays homage to classic romantic comedies while having a point of view all its own.
A warm and winning "When Harry Met Sally…" update that hits all the perfect notes.Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0675-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 068487122X
Page Count: 872
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
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