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THE BODY IN QUESTION

This honest, mature look at life and love adds to a growing body of evidence leading to a decisive verdict: Ciment is an...

Two sequestered jurors on a tabloidworthy Florida murder trial tumble into an impassioned, illicit affair in this engaging, empathetic novel.

In a jury holding room, waiting to be called into the courtroom for a voir dire, two prospective jurors, identified for most of the book only as C-2 and F-17, begin a flirtation that rapidly grows into a full-blown love affair. C-2 is a 52-year-old female photographer of some renown. Having shot portraits for magazines like Rolling Stone and Interview early in her career, she eventually concluded she was interested in people not as individuals but as a species, and she turned her lens to other subjects, such as war and animals. C-2 is married to a much older man, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who is now 85. Their once-ardent relationship has evolved, and she is increasingly aware of the toll time is taking on their lives and bodies. Now, intensely attracted to F-17, a professor of anatomy in his early 40s with a pitted complexion, piercing blue eyes, and “beautiful feet,” C-2 finds herself hoping for “one last dalliance before she gets too old.” As the affair plays out against a backdrop of a gruesome, sad, and unsettling murder trial (a teenage girl stands accused of killing her toddler brother, but is the real culprit her twin sister?) and the shabby Econo Lodge accommodations and unappetizing luncheonette meals the court has arranged for the jurors during their sequestration, C-2, as both a lover and a juror, must weigh issues of guilt and innocence, loyalty and betrayal, life and death, passion and compassion. Ciment (Act of God, 2015, etc.) lays out the plot—part love story, part whodunit, part coming-of-old-age tale—with gentle sensitivity and straightforward intelligence, approaching complex emotions and conflicting loyalties as might a good juror: observing her characters’ behavior with an open mind and heart, an ability to consider context and varied perspectives, an appreciation for the evidence, and a notable lack of judgment.

This honest, mature look at life and love adds to a growing body of evidence leading to a decisive verdict: Ciment is an author well worth reading.

Pub Date: June 11, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5247-4798-5

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019

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IT ENDS WITH US

Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...

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Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.

At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.

Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.

Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

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

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