Subdued but often incisive portrayals of everyday lives.
Bloom presents collection of short stories in which characters oscillate between loneliness and detachment.
In “A Baja Summer,” the opening and longest tale, journalistJerry Briggs has an assignment on the eponymous peninsula. As he awaits the political event he’s there to cover, he revels in excess—drinking heavily, chain-smoking cigarettes, and ingesting peyote. For company, he has Mickey Rollins, a cage fighter he’s known since childhood, and Brent Baxter, a college pal who’s in Baja for a cousin’s wedding. Jerry and Brent later go on a double date with locals Maria and Layla.Brent becomes somewhat fixated on Maria, but that may not stop Jerry from spending some time alone with her. When the assignment is done, will Jerry stick around, or will he be ready to pack his bags? The remaining eight stories are notably shorter. “Knock Yourself Out” has a similar setup to “Baja”: Burr and Leek are friends vying for the attention of Masha at a ballroom dance. The boys have planned an impromptu outing in the snowy wilderness, but their friendship could wither if Masha chooses one of them to join her on the ballroom floor. Several characters seem on the verge of isolation, even when surrounded by others. In “A Stormy Backdrop,” for instance, young Van’s pals cheer him on as he climbs a tree that’s close to keeling over. An approaching storm practically guarantees this tree will fall, and chances are that the lad will blame the people egging him on.
“A Baja Summer,” which effectively depicts a man who lives as if happiness is a distant memory, is the clear highlight of this collection. Some of the accompanying tales come across as mere snippets of longer, better-developed narratives. That’s certainly the case with “A Familiar Accord,” in which Richard Grant heads to a place called Santoro’s, where he’s part of a scheme to take care of a “racket” that’s “overextended.” It’s a moody, noirish piece that unsatisfyingly teases many promising elements, such as driver Mel and his mysterious “passenger,” who drop Richard off at Santoro’s. However, “City Country,” a snapshot of a chaotic city jam-packed with buildings and people, offers a showcase for the author’s lyrical prose: “The sidewalks blocked by legions of wide-hipped stroller pushers, bikers massaging the pavement with tread, smokers shirking their rebellion for all to whale, and when you catch a flurry of young, grit-nub children, you realize this place is merciless to a degree of comedy.” Its cast brims with intriguing characters, from fellow hunters out on a hunt to a woman who grows fond of a suitor whom she sees as a “glorified butler.” The book closes with another fine tale, “In a Line to Get Out,” which centers on Henry Blackman, who’s waiting at a train station for someone’s late arrival. He’s just one person in a crowd of people with their own problems, including an angry man demanding to speak with a manager and the lady impatiently waiting in line in front of him.
Subdued but often incisive portrayals of everyday lives.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2024
ISBN: 9781944527020
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Natural Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.
And now for some lessons in poetry and typesetting.
After Lessons in Chemistry (2022), a debut that became one of the most popular books of recent years, Garmus applies her unique comic sensibility to the story of Batter Gray, a man named after a family dog of mythic talents. A poetry maven who was reading Auden as a fourth grader, he was raised by a type-designer mother and historian father who dearly hoped he would choose some more viable profession than poetry. But via an amazing stroke of luck, he lands a job after college at Peck & Peck, an illustrious literary journal located in a beautiful building in New York City. He’s at the very bottom of the complex and dysfunctional totem pole, making copies in the basement, struggling not to run afoul of the cantankerous editor-in-chief, Salton Peck, or his smarmy assistant, Dexter York, both of whom have taken an instant dislike to our hero (and can never get his name right. Few people can). And to be honest, Batter is not without his flaws. The novel bogs down a bit in the middle, with Salton constantly excoriating his staff in ALL CAPS and much ado over the possibility that submissions have been taken outside the building, which is forbidden. Along the way, many, many famous poets are name-checked, as are many typefaces, since Batter has been raised to instantly identify a font in the wild. The best example of this occurs during his brief sojourn in jail: “The thing I kind of admired about Motherfucker II, besides his manners, was this huge tattoo he had on his neck that read I will fuck you up in ITC Bolt. Call me my mother’s son, but whoever inked it nailed the kerning.” The narrative picks up steam toward the end, as bad guys become good guys, mysteries are solved, and Batter throws one hell of a party.
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781668251065
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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