A political farce that is both thoughtful and entertaining.
A Southern senator drives his state’s secession from the union and transformation into a sovereign Christian nation in Hooker’s satirical novel.
Pastor Gabriel Horne, head of the Jubilee Church of Revelation somewhere deep in the South, believes America is spiraling into decline, besotted by godlessness, communism, and the “slime and filth of disease, of Yankeedom.” He hears a voice assuring him that help is on the way—that help arrives in the form of Margaret Wurmser, a deep-pocketed real-estate mogul looking to develop beachfront property in his state. Blessed with her money, Horne pushes freshman Senator Loomis Gruber to secede from the union, declare his state an independent nation (“New Canaan”), and install himself as its first president. The new nation is a queasy mix of extremist, largely hateful principles, including Christian fundamentalism, antisemitism, and undisguised misogyny. (Altus Drech, New Canaan’s Minister of Homeland Security and Information, is an “unapologetic fascist” and admirer of Hitler.) At first, the new nation’s citizens receive their independence in a “rapturous mood,” but soon the populous begins to revolt, especially women angered by an edict issued by the Council of God affirming their inequality to men. In this farcically humorous tale, the creation of New Canaan quickly and predictably devolves into civil catastrophe, though that doesn’t stop it from inspiring other states to follow its dubious lead. While the narrative is ostentatiously ludicrous—the characters are all hilariously drawn comic stereotypes—the author achieves a menacing air of plausibility (secession and war have happened before, and states continue to threaten it, however disingenuously). The practical possibility of secession is beside the point, though—the novel vividly realizes a comic vision of the nation’s fragility as a result of its cultural fractures, divisions so deep a significant portion of the body politic holds another significant portion in implacable contempt. This is a genuinely funny book, filled with insightful commentary on America’s volatile present.
A political farce that is both thoughtful and entertaining.Pub Date: July 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781959620112
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Booklocker.com
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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