After just two collections, Brinkley may already be a grand master of the short story.
Short stories that in their depth of feeling, perception, and sense of place affirm their author’s bright promise.
As in his debut collection, A Lucky Man (2018), Brinkley sets these stories in New York City ethnic neighborhoods on the edge of transformation, vividly and, at times, hauntingly showing how the people in those enclaves struggle to withstand, even transcend the changes around them. “The Happiest House on Union Street,” for instance, focuses on a young girl named Beverly, old enough to be “past the phase of making words up,” who spends the days and nights leading up to Halloween trying to mediate tensions between her father and her uncle (both named Ray) as a developer is showing interest in the Brooklyn home that’s been in their family for generations. Then there’s “Bartow Station,” in which a delivery-truck driver’s encounter with an abandoned subway tunnel triggers unwanted memories of a personal tragedy. In this story, as in others, characters’ presumptions are upended, secrets revealed, and wounds, both physical and psychological, are exposed. These factors come together most strikingly in the title story, in which a young woman named Bernice embarks on a romance with a club DJ to the consternation of her truculent, disapproving brother, and the petty disputes among the three of them obscure the fact that something is terribly wrong with Bernice’s health. In some ways, the plots of these stories, however engrossing, are less significant than their vivid physical details, graceful language, and acute observation of even the most bewildering of human behavior. Brinkley’s stories carry a rich veneer worthy of such exemplars of the form as Chekhov, Eudora Welty, Alice Munro, and James Alan McPherson. At their best, these stories provide inspiration to all of us, no matter who we are or where we live, on how best to deal with those moments in life when, as one of Brinkley’s characters puts it, “all we can manage…is halting small talk, and the awkwardness of it resounds in our ears.”
After just two collections, Brinkley may already be a grand master of the short story.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9780374607036
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A unique concept that promises readers will find at least one, if not three, entwined but different narratives to enjoy.
When Vis is copied into two other realities, he must stop a god from repeatedly culling almost everyone back home.
Thousands of years ago, to prevent the Concurrence from enslaving everyone, the world was split into three near-identical copies: Res, Obiteum, and Luceum. To exist in all three worlds, to wield Will there, is to achieve synchronism. After the events in The Will of the Many (2023), which cost Vis his arm and the life of his friend, Vis achieves Synchronism. While Res-Vis must continue to play Hierarchy politics to find his friend’s killer, Obiteum-Vis finds a ruined world, where the dead are reanimated and used by Ka, the Concurrence, and the only other person to exist in synchronism. Meanwhile, Luceum-Vis is forced into a dispute between druids, their High Council, and their kings—with one king intent on killing him—and Vis has no idea why. On all worlds, Vis is as shrewd as ever, weighing his options, planning ahead, and doing what he must to survive. However, he, too, slowly diverges, doing things he swore he never would: cede his Will, use Will to control someone else, and reveal his true name. If at least one Vis cannot use his synchronism and power of Will to kill the Concurrence, no Vis will be safe, and another Cataclysm will cull those he loves on Res. Book Two of the Hierarchy series is a speculative fantasy that is at once Egyptian post-apocalyptic, Celtic medieval, and Roman dystopian, thanks to the multidimensional setting. Although the sprawling narrative at times overextends itself, Islington rewards patient readers with a compelling story, a cast of complex and diverse characters, and a glimpse into how far a good man can go before he’s lost. A symbol at the start of each chapter delineates which world and Vis it’s about. Readers should read The Will of the Many before attempting this volume, or they may be confused for the first several chapters and beyond.
A unique concept that promises readers will find at least one, if not three, entwined but different narratives to enjoy.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781982141233
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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