An imaginatively woven collection of tales with the occasional overembellishment.
A volume of interconnected short stories centers on Mother’s Day.
Six tales are offered in this promising debut. The opening piece, plainly titled “Mother’s Day Alice’s Story,” introduces Alice Miller, a “lonely middle-aged artist.” It is the first Mother’s Day since her mom died. Sitting in a cafe, she sadly sends a text message, “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom,” and then dismisses it as pathetic. The message is received by Jamal, a security officer who has been assigned Alice’s mother’s old number. When Alice is involved in an accident, events take an unexpected turn. The next story adopts a similar format with Neal Amato, an assistant manager at a New Jersey restaurant, also sending a text to his dead mother, which is read by Liz, who works on the metro desk at the New York Times. In “Mike’s Weekend,” Mike Bloom plans a perfect birthday for his wife. “Mingo Fishtrap 2005” focuses on siblings going to see a band to let off steam; “Jamal’s Story” examines the character’s life after his discharge from the Army; and “Mom’s” features teenage friends drinking illicitly. Schwartz thoughtfully addresses real life dilemmas that other writers may overlook, such as the question of deleting a parent as a cellphone contact after the loved one’s death: “There at the top of her favorites list was the name ‘Mom.’ She had not had the will to delete the contact. Would anyone?” His use of a question is particularly effective here, provoking uncomfortable reflections from readers. It is also compelling to learn how each of the tales is interlinked—which the author reveals incrementally. Schwartz’s failing is that he does not trust readers’ intuitions. The author has a habit of telegraphing what his characters have learned from their journeys. For example, with regard to Jamal: “He would be educated regarding the human condition and help him see the world as it really is.” An epilogue that ties the various characters even tighter together is also unnecessary and makes for an excessively neat conclusion. The first two stories in the book are by far the most impactful, but this remains a thought-provoking and elegantly conceived work that will leave readers wanting more.
An imaginatively woven collection of tales with the occasional overembellishment.Pub Date: March 21, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A fun take on a big question.
“Love the one you’re with” is the song’s advice, but is that really still the best approach?
When Lauren, a single woman in London, returns home a little tipsy after a friend’s hen party, she encounters a strange man in her flat. He sounds like he knows her and, despite her concerns, doesn’t seem to represent a threat. It takes some time for Lauren to figure out that he’s actually the husband she’s somehow acquired in another life. It takes her more time to figure out that the attic over her flat, courtesy of an electrical malfunction, will be sending her an apparently endless stream of husbands once she sends each previous one back upstairs—this is not a novel about bigamy. Lauren finds her own circumstances (job, hairstyle, decorating scheme) changed with each subsequent spouse, and she eventually realizes this is not a “time loop” she’s in; time is advancing as she works her way through her possible spouses. Some of the husbands are tolerable, some attractive, some complete “no’s” (who wants to spend a lifetime with someone who likes to nestle the tip of their nose in the corner of your closed eye?). Gramazio’s often comedic fantasy rom-com proceeds from an unlikely premise, but the plot allows the author to explore current attitudes and approaches to dating and mating from a fresh perspective: Given the infinite variety of people in the world, how can you know “the one” when there may be a better one just around the corner (or descending the attic staircase)? Lauren’s madcap romp with the parade of spouses takes a few serious turns, particularly when one is reluctant to climb back upstairs, but the makings of a comic miniseries are all here.
A fun take on a big question.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550611
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
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