A quirky fairy tale with a vibrantly realized setting and a wonderfully outrageous twist.
A woman comes of age in Fifth-Floor Dresses at San Francisco’s upscale I. Magnin department store in the 1980s.
There are a lot of things 19-year-old Zippy has never done: She’s never been to a school dance or on a date, never been told she’s pretty, had a real boyfriend, or had sex; and, until she met her current roommate, Raquel, never had a best friend, tried alcohol, or taken a cab. She’s never eaten an artichoke or been to Seattle or Sonoma; she’s never met her father or even known his name—she’s the product of a one-night stand and grew up in a tiny apartment over a liquor store, sleeping in the hallway after her mom married a man named Howard. Though no one has ever noticed Zippy’s obvious intelligence or suggested she apply to college, there is one area where this naïve people-pleaser shines, and that is selling clothes. The highlight of Blau’s latest is the vivid department store setting, from the Adrienne Vittadini and Bill Blass dresses to the individual saleswomen, the hold tags, the complaint cards. Those pesky complaint cards! Despite Zippy’s tireless work and top-selling status, there have been a flood of cards claiming she’s pushy and bossy, that she forces bras and shoes on customers, that people are afraid to return clothes while she’s there. How can such a smart girl not immediately realize these must have been fabricated by a jealous colleague? Well, the other thing is that Zippy is profoundly insecure. Her low self-esteem is focused in particular on her appearance and her body, and this drives a subplot about dieting and weight loss. Though this coming-of-age story is not as edgy as some of the author’s earlier work, it still has plenty of unusual sex talk—a penis “so lumpy” it looks like “a miniature sack of kittens”; much discussion of holes, smells, and fluids; a venereal disease rumored to cause “fuzzy buttons” on a man’s testicles. AIDS, too, plays a role, though not an unduly serious one, in Zippy’s journey toward filling some of the gaps in her life.
A quirky fairy tale with a vibrantly realized setting and a wonderfully outrageous twist.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780063052352
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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