Lynch dissects an uncommon family with, after all, more than one thing in common in a highly readable tale.
A cautionary tale of obsession and what it can cost tells of three generations whose devotion to sailing holds them together until it sunders them.
Through the first-person voice of middle son Josh and smooth tacking between the present and past, Lynch (Truth Like the Sun, 2012, etc.) charts the shifting fortunes of the Johannssen family. Gramps, known as Grumps, and his son, Bobo Jr., design sailboats in the Pacific Northwest, where the son is a racing legend. His wife, a physics teacher, explains the science of wind and water to their three children, while he bullies them into mastering everything else from stem to stern. The eldest, Bernard, and Josh become accomplished sailors, but little sister Ruby is possessed of marine magic. When she inexplicably scuttles her chances for a spot in the Olympics, however, it’s clear there are cracks in the Johannssen crew. Ruby will abandon sailing for volunteer work on a hospital ship off Africa; Bernard heads out to sea solo and a gypsy life partly supported by illegal butterfly sales. The Bobos run their boat business into trouble, and Mom emerges from a decade of work on a 150-year-old math riddle unsure if she should submit her solution. Josh remains close to home, working in a boatyard and living in a marina on one of his family’s designs. No longer a competitive sailor, he still keeps a mental log of the Johannssens’ past glories and recent struggles. The book’s present concerns his eccentric co-workers and neighbors, including one named Noah who provides comic counterpoint on familial harmony in the animal kingdom with a Morgan Freeman imitation and quotes from the voice-over of March of the Penguins. Josh’s marina life and computer dates offer glimpses of an alternative family amid his father’s push to bring the clan together for one last race.
Lynch dissects an uncommon family with, after all, more than one thing in common in a highly readable tale.Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-307-95898-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
A heartwarming portrait of a broken heart finding a little healing magic.
After acing a job interview and accepting a marriage proposal, Dannie Kohan has had the perfect day. That is, until she awakens to find herself five years in the future with a completely different man.
Just one hour in that alternate reality shakes Dannie to her core. After all, highly ambitious Dannie and her boyfriend, David, have plotted out their lives in minute detail, and the sexy man in her dream—was it a dream?—is most certainly not in the script. Serle (The Dinner List, 2018) deftly spins these magical threads into Dannie’s perfectly structured life, leaving not only Dannie, but also the reader wondering whether Dannie time traveled or hallucinated. Her best friend, Bella, would delight in the story given that she thinks Dannie is much too straight-laced, and some spicy dreaming might push Dannie to find someone more passionate than David. Unfortunately, glamorous Bella is in Europe with her latest lover. Ever pragmatic, Dannie consults her therapist, who almost concurs that it was likely a dream, and throws herself into her work. Pleased to have landed the job at a prestigious law firm, Dannie easily loses her worries in litigation. Soon four and a half years have passed with no wedding date set, and Bella is back in the U.S. with a new man in her life. A man who turns out to be literally the man of Dannie’s dream. The sheer fact of Aaron Gregory’s existence forces Dannie to reevaluate her trust in the laws of physics as well as her decision to marry David, a decision that seems less believable with each passing day. And as the architecture of Dannie’s overplanned life disintegrates, Serle twists and twines the remnants of her dream into a surprising future.
A heartwarming portrait of a broken heart finding a little healing magic.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3744-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Corrosive dispatches from the divided heart of America.
Edgy humor and fierce imagery coexist in these stories with shrewd characterization and humane intelligence, inspired by volatile material sliced off the front pages.
The state of race relations in post-millennial America haunts most of the stories in this debut collection. Yet Adjei-Brenyah brings to what pundits label our “ongoing racial dialogue” a deadpan style, an acerbic perspective, and a wicked imagination that collectively upend readers’ expectations. “The Finkelstein 5,” the opener, deals with the furor surrounding the murder trial of a white man claiming self-defense in slaughtering five black children with a chainsaw. The story is as prickly in its view toward black citizens seeking their own justice as it is pitiless toward white bigots pressing for an acquittal. An even more caustic companion story, “Zimmer Land,” is told from the perspective of an African-American employee of a mythical theme park whose white patrons are encouraged to act out their fantasies of dispensing brutal justice to people of color they regard as threatening on sight, or “problem solving," as its mission statement calls it. Such dystopian motifs recur throughout the collection: “The Era,” for example, identifies oppressive class divisions in a post-apocalyptic school district where self-esteem seems obtainable only through regular injections of a controlled substance called “Good.” The title story, meanwhile, riotously reimagines holiday shopping as the blood-spattered zombie movie you sometimes fear it could be in real life. As alternately gaudy and bleak as such visions are, there’s more in Adjei-Brenyah’s quiver besides tough-minded satire, as exhibited in “The Lion & the Spider,” a tender coming-of-age story cleverly framed in the context of an African fable.
Corrosive dispatches from the divided heart of America.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-91124-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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