A nihilistic work whose central plot is overcome by rambling monologues about the troubled state of humanity.
In Bloom’s novella, an agent named Higgins, alias Mats Odon, works as customer relations for the powerful Mammoth organization, and his loyalties to both corporate and revolutionary causes result in a dramatic unravelling.
Having done many dubious tasks for Mammoth before, Higgins concludes that his latest assignment is “to be his last.” His character is counting down the final 89 days in his posting, ignoring corporate backstabbing and “a leaked coup” to focus on completing his assignments. The mysterious corporation has a powerful reach, both across the media and in individuals’ lives, with Higgins reflecting: “There was no destination to escape to. He’d still be seeking some thing and this was not a bother, only a truth.” Assuming his latest identity, Mats Odon, amid corporate pen-pushing, he reflects on “the revolution”—a movement of which he may once have been a part. However, he gave up its actions for a comfortable life with plenty of perks: “Selling out did not bother him.” A surprise meeting with Damascus Dieter, his billionaire boss, results in a deal of “a signing bonus and extra income, without extending his stay.” Soon, he meets an old revolutionary friend, resulting in Odon becoming “an agent double entwined,” going off the grid and selling out once again. After a blurry interlude of drinking, cigarettes, women, and implied drug-testing with a motley bunch of men—Gorey, Meyer, Alexey, and the Vet—the protagonist feel that he’s “lost his cool. He needed structure.” He tries to maintain the relationships in both halves of his life but feels as if he is in a “perpetual hallucination shared with witnessing pretenders.” As deceptions and realities become blurred, a dangerous drug Isos is nearing the mass market—and Odon is in danger of becoming addicted.
The conversations between the protagonist and other agents are straight out of a noir novel: no niceties, all punchy exchanges: “You dance behind closed doors in another man’s office” and “Shoddy work. Fucking goons. Never left anything right.” This makes the contrast between most characters and Tara Thames, a data analyst in the company, all the starker, as she discusses orgasms and sexual desire with her friends. The reader traverses through the hazy plot and the main character’s cynicism, all dispersed over short, snappy chapters. Between the rambling internal monologues and the switches from first- to third-person perspectives, Bloom ends up evoking the same ennui in the reader that the characters experience. Monologues are punctuated by references to George Bellows and Everett Shinn, two American realist painters known for their depictions of urban life, which seems to be a touchstone for “testosterone fueled madness” for Odon. Unlike the output of these painters, Bloom’s work is impressionistic, relying heavily on the vague shape of a plot instead of a solid, sustained one. Ostensibly a commentary on the soullessness of corporate America and the immoral pharmaceutical industry, the book’s salient points are obscured by the stream-of-consciousness style.
A nihilistic work whose central plot is overcome by rambling monologues about the troubled state of humanity.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781944527952
Page Count: 136
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
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