Although Rotter’s novel is conceptually interesting, Rowan’s journey becomes tedious, and the forces he tries to evade are...
A futuristic novel set in a bleak landscape involving an eccentric family of putative criminals and, eventually, a strange odyssey across America.
At his mother’s insistence, narrator Rowan Van Zandt is enrolled at the Old Miamy School for Drugs and Doctors in an effort to improve his rather sorry lot in life, for he lives in an area of urban violence and general dreariness. Pop, Rowan’s father, worked at Airplane Food until he killed a threatening little thug named, ironically enough, I Murder, by throwing him in a vat of boiling eggs. Then Rowan and his twin brother, Faron, got into their own brand of trouble in an altercation at a local zoo. This is all upsetting to Rowan and Faron’s hardworking mom, Umma, when a smooth deus ex machina named Terry Nguyen offers a devil’s bargain—he’ll reunite the family (and grant amnesty) if they will “volunteer” to be part of a crew to test the Orion spaceship. After some hesitation, Umma agrees to the terms. The Van Zandts start to train at an abandoned launch pad at Cape Cannibal (aka Canaveral) with Bill and Mae Reade and their daughter, Sylvia. After Umma commits suicide, Rowan goes on the lam, wandering out West to escape Terry. Rowan seeks out observatories such as Mount Wilson and Lowell, which have become historical landmarks in a culture both ignorant of and hostile to astronomical knowledge.
Although Rotter’s novel is conceptually interesting, Rowan’s journey becomes tedious, and the forces he tries to evade are of little interest.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62779-152-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
This graceful story offers insights into family, friendship, and finding a way to move on after a loss.
A woman whose life has been knocked off balance by her daughter’s absence struggles to regain her equilibrium.
At first glance, Sarah would seem to have it all: a devoted husband, a Brooklyn brownstone, money, good looks (attracting attention even in her late 40s), privilege, the dregs of a successful career as a filmmaker, an agent waiting to support her next project. However, as Hershon’s novel unspools over the course of a long weekend, in which Sarah and her husband, Matthew, are violently mugged in Prospect Park and then travel upstate to reconnect with old friends—a couple named Kiki and Arman—we learn that Sarah’s life is far from perfect. Sarah and Matthew’s troubled 24-year-old daughter, Leda, has vanished from their lives; the stress caused by her yearslong absence has nearly cost Sarah her marriage (she and Matthew have reconciled after a two-year separation) and her career (she can’t write about Leda, yet neither can she write about anything else). Kiki and Arman, too, have their problems as well as a new baby daughter who stirs memories—both pleasant and painful—for Sarah. In clear, compassionate prose, Hershon (A Dual Inheritance, 2013, etc.) conjures characters readers may initially assume they know and then gently and gradually subverts those assumptions, revealing the emotions and difficulties with which these nuanced characters are grappling. Ultimately the author offers notes of hope—that the secrets and sadnesses, disappointments and distress that can damage relationships, derail pursuits, and erode lives when they are held inside and in isolation can resolve when shared; that sometimes finding a way back to one another is the best way to find a way forward.
This graceful story offers insights into family, friendship, and finding a way to move on after a loss.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-26814-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
With its flat, staccato tone and mournful mood, it’s almost as if the book itself were suffering from depression.
A young Philadelphia policewoman searches for her addicted sister on the streets.
The title of Moore’s (The Unseen World, 2016, etc.) fourth novel refers to “a long bright river of departed souls,” the souls of people dead from opioid overdoses in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington. The book opens with a long paragraph that's just a list of names, most of whom don’t have a role in the plot, but the last two entries are key: “Our mother. Our father.” As the novel opens, narrator Mickey Fitzpatrick—a bright but emotionally damaged single mom—is responding with her partner to a call. A dead girl has turned up in an abandoned train yard frequented by junkies. Mickey is terrified that it will be her estranged sister, Kacey, whom she hasn’t seen in a while. The two were raised by their grandmother, a cold, bitter woman who never recovered from the overdose death of the girls' mother. Mickey herself is awkward and tense in all social situations; when she talks about her childhood she mentions watching the other kids from the window, trying to memorize their mannerisms so she could “steal them and use them [her]self.” She is close with no one except her 4-year-old son, Thomas, whom she barely sees because she works so much, leaving him with an unenthusiastic babysitter. Opioid abuse per se is not the focus of the action—the book centers on the search for Kacey. Obsessed with the possibility that her sister will end up dead before she can find her, Mickey breaches protocol and makes a series of impulsive decisions that get her in trouble. The pace is frustratingly slow for most of the book, then picks up with a flurry of revelations and developments toward the end, bringing characters onstage we don’t have enough time to get to know. The narrator of this atmospheric crime novel has every reason to be difficult and guarded, but the reader may find her no easier to bond with than the other characters do.
With its flat, staccato tone and mournful mood, it’s almost as if the book itself were suffering from depression.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54067-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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