An enthusiastic, profound coming-of-age tale for an older generation.
A middle-aged rocker traverses the highs and lows of modern-day California in this introspective sequel.
Jack is living his dream. For the last couple of years, the 50-something has had regular music gigs in two bands. He’s a long way from his corporate job back East, having gradually made his way to California. Now he’s doing what he loves—jamming on guitar and bass for a paycheck and surfing whenever he gets a chance. Jack’s life hasn’t been without tribulations. He mourns the partner he lost to cancer, regrets leaving a girlfriend when he took a mountain rescue job in Colorado, and, most recently, seems to miss another girlfriend whose job called her to New Zealand. Still, he revels in his freedom. He has no worries about taking care of a family—an ideal that his drunken father had long ago tarnished. Sadly, Jack’s current and reliable love, California, undergoes big changes. Wildfire evacuations upend his peace, and a planned resort threatens to demolish the homes in his beachside community. Jack, meanwhile, can’t help but reflect on the “girl” in “Sunset Road,” one of his band’s most popular songs. “There is no sunset road,” Jack muses. “There’s just a road, and no one at the end waiting for you, unless you ask them to.” But he soon meets Eve, a schoolteacher and a single mother. Jack, a free spirit on stage, suddenly finds himself immersed in Eve’s extended family, an unfamiliar terrain that he willingly braves.
Das's novel, a sequel to Dudeville(2017), brims with lively descriptions of its sunny locale. Characters watch glorious sunsets, drift off listening to the crashing tides, and endure high temperatures that wildfires make even hotter. Jack, though, spends a lot of time in his head; a recurring scene shows him zoning out while stuck in California traffic (with honking horns bringing him back to reality). But even when he ponders abstract ideas, details remain concrete. For example, Jack contemplates the Presence, aka God: “The Presence is nowhere more intensely present than above treeline, at the top of a mountain, with all of creation spread out before me; or at the very bottom of a desert canyon, with all of Time…or pouring in off the ocean, in pulsing waves of consciousness beyond my consciousness.” As part of his introspection, Jack experiments with different religions, which Das treats respectfully. The protagonist embraces Judaism, though he wasn’t born Jewish, and Jack, who’s White, learns about Eve’s Native family’s religion. These differing religions represent unity, or a family, that Jack, who’s something of a drifter, doesn’t have. As the story progresses, readers catch glimpses of Jack’s fascinating life—his troubled childhood, past loves, and the incident that led to his rock ’n’ roll–filled days. Jack maintains an intriguing serenity, especially under pressure—his “eye-of-the-shitstorm mode.” He’s a believable character; his calm exterior sometimes breaks, like when he takes an understandably aggressive tone with “surf punks” bullying others at the beach.
An enthusiastic, profound coming-of-age tale for an older generation.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-578-75439-0
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Bayamet Books
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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