The promised sequel to The Planets, Boylan's 1991 saga of the sociopathic human menagerie of Centralia, Pa.—the town that sits atop a mine fire that's smoldered out of control since 1962—is just as mad, though by no means as magical. ``I wish you wanted me,'' unlovely teen Phoebe Harrison tells her long-deserted mother in a typed note she forgetfully leaves behind en route to the tattoo parlor one summer day. In no time at all, both Phoebe's uncle, Patrick Flinch, and Isabelle Smuggs, an inventive sculptor staying at the Flinches' find the note—and each, naturally, assumes it's from the other. Complications ensue, distracting the characters so effectively they don't even notice when Phoebe's older sister Demmie and her gum-chewing boyfriend Billings break in and rob the house. Next thing you know, it's three months later, and Phoebe's back in the home of her father, Wedley, and her hated stepmother, Vicki, a beautician who's still carrying on the world's least clandestine affair with Wedley's next-door neighbor Dwayne—an affair that will have a sudden, decisive impact on Phoebe's coiffure. Then it's winter, the season when Phoebe is reunited with her mother, and Isabelle, whose sculptural work up until now has mostly been a meticulously correct set of innards, opens the exhibit she hopes will make her fortune- -grotesquely decapitated heads of famous folks from Amelia Earhart to Barton Sumac, the avant-garde painter who asked her to pose over a period of weeks before producing an enormous painting of her breasts—only to have the treacherous painter himself steal the exhibit, setting the stage for a monumentally loopy mass kidnapping, extortion, etc. The seasonal metaphor and the unfolding of his characters' peccadilloes give Boylan's story the centrifugal force of a runaway comet; but gorgeously shaggy episodes too often peter off into blackout sketches before the long-awaited finale kicks in.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-43021-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.
11
GET IT
Inseparable identical twin sisters ditch home together, and then one decides to vanish.
The talented Bennett fuels her fiction with secrets—first in her lauded debut, The Mothers (2016), and now in the assured and magnetic story of the Vignes sisters, light-skinned women parked on opposite sides of the color line. Desiree, the “fidgety twin,” and Stella, “a smart, careful girl,” make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans. The novel opens 14 years later as Desiree, fleeing a violent marriage in D.C., returns home with a different relative: her 8-year-old daughter, Jude. The gossips are agog: “In Mallard, nobody married dark....Marrying a dark man and dragging his blueblack child all over town was one step too far.” Desiree's decision seals Jude’s misery in this “colorstruck” place and propels a new generation of flight: Jude escapes on a track scholarship to UCLA. Tending bar as a side job in Beverly Hills, she catches a glimpse of her mother’s doppelgänger. Stella, ensconced in White society, is shedding her fur coat. Jude, so Black that strangers routinely stare, is unrecognizable to her aunt. All this is expertly paced, unfurling before the book is half finished; a reader can guess what is coming. Bennett is deeply engaged in the unknowability of other people and the scourge of colorism. The scene in which Stella adopts her White persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion. It calls up Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the book's 50-year-old antecedent. Bennett's novel plays with its characters' nagging feelings of being incomplete—for the twins without each other; for Jude’s boyfriend, Reese, who is trans and seeks surgery; for their friend Barry, who performs in drag as Bianca. Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp. In the second half, Jude spars with her cousin Kennedy, Stella's daughter, a spoiled actress.
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53629-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.
GET IT
Women become horseback librarians in 1930s Kentucky and face challenges from the landscape, the weather, and the men around them.
Alice thought marrying attractive American Bennett Van Cleve would be her ticket out of her stifling life in England. But when she and Bennett settle in Baileyville, Kentucky, she realizes that her life consists of nothing more than staying in their giant house all day and getting yelled at by his unpleasant father, who owns a coal mine. She’s just about to resign herself to a life of boredom when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a traveling horseback library—an initiative from Eleanor Roosevelt meant to counteract the devastating effects of the Depression by focusing on literacy and learning. Much to the dismay of her husband and father-in-law, Alice signs up and soon learns the ropes from the library’s leader, Margery. Margery doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her, rejects marriage, and would rather be on horseback than in a kitchen. And even though all this makes Margery a town pariah, Alice quickly grows to like her. Along with several other women (including one black woman, Sophia, whose employment causes controversy in a town that doesn’t believe black and white people should be allowed to use the same library), Margery and Alice supply magazines, Bible stories, and copies of books like Little Women to the largely poor residents who live in remote areas. Alice spends long days in terrible weather on horseback, but she finally feels happy in her new life in Kentucky, even as her marriage to Bennett is failing. But her powerful father-in-law doesn’t care for Alice’s job or Margery’s lifestyle, and he’ll stop at nothing to shut their library down. Basing her novel on the true story of the Pack Horse Library Project established by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, Moyes (Still Me, 2018, etc.) brings an often forgotten slice of history to life. She writes about Kentucky with lush descriptions of the landscape and tender respect for the townspeople, most of whom are poor, uneducated, and grateful for the chance to learn. Although Alice and Margery both have their own romances, the true power of the story is in the bonds between the women of the library. They may have different backgrounds, but their commitment to helping the people of Baileyville brings them together.
A love letter to the power of books and friendship.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-56248-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
Did you like this book?
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2020 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
