An overwrought scaffolding draped with undercooked prose. Maybe if you really love du Maurier...
The author of a Daphne du Maurier knockoff is asked to ghostwrite another du Maurier–adjacent story.
As Cantor, author of the Gatsby-inspired Beautiful Little Fools (2022), notes in her acknowledgments, “In many ways this novel is extremely meta, but what is more so than a fiction writer who just wrote a retelling, writing a novel about a fiction writer…who just wrote a retelling?” Actually, it’s quite a bit more complicated than that. Olivia Fitzgerald, struggling author of an unsuccessful book called Becky based on du Maurier’s classic Rebecca (“The death knell was the Kirkus review…calling Becky ‘a shoddy, ridiculous knockoff’ ”), is hired to write yet another version of the gothic romance by a hot, reclusive mega-billionaire who claims du Maurier stole his late grandmother’s life story. The chapters that unfold Olivia's trip to California to meet with Henry Asherwood are interspersed with excerpts from what seems to be yet another version of the story, titled The Wife; by whom it was written is unclear. There are also echoes of the Rebecca story arc in Ash’s own life. Everywhere you look, it seems, there are dead wives, unfriendly housekeepers, fires, and the sentence “Last night I dreamt I went to Malibu again,” which is clever but five repetitions seem like a lot. Our path through this house of mirrors is the burgeoning, quasi-forbidden romance between Ash (twice named People’s Sexiest Man Alive) and Olivia (“average-looking, curly-haired Jewish girl from suburban Connecticut”), unfurled in such a perfunctory and silly way that it’s possibly supposed to be funny. “Then I tried the scone—simultaneously spicy and sweet and unlike anything I’d tasted before. Unusual but intoxicating. Almost like Ash himself.” LOL. The clear point of the exercise is that literary retellings are not thievery—Rebecca itself can be seen as a retelling of Jane Eyre—but at a certain point one wonders if there's any reason to tell this story so many times.
An overwrought scaffolding draped with undercooked prose. Maybe if you really love du Maurier...Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780778334187
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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