Coetzee seems to be having some compassionate fun, and so will the reader.
A droll novel that skips lightly across serious matters—art and death and love.
There’s a playfulness from the outset of this slim work by the Nobel Prize–winning Coetzee. “The woman is the first to give him trouble, followed soon afterwards by the man,” it begins. The woman, we soon learn, is Beatriz, a board member of the music series that has brought the man to Barcelona. The man is the title character, a Polish pianist “whose name has so many w’s and z’s in it that no one on the board even tries to pronounce it—they refer to him simply as ‘the Pole.’ ” Which leaves “him,” and that would be the novelist, who presents himself as not creating these two characters but chronicling them, perhaps channeling them, as if they have hearts of their own. The pianist is known for his idiosyncratic readings of his countryman Chopin, though he falls well short of a virtuoso’s renown. Just as he is not an extraordinary musician, she is not an extraordinary listener. She seems to be doing her civic duty, as some women of a certain age and income might. She will soon be turning 50; he’s almost a quarter-century older. “Surely, at his age, he will not expect sex,” she thinks, even before her obligatory first meeting with him, which appears inconsequential. But why is she even thinking of that? She is a married woman, though she and her husband pretty much lead separate, sexless lives. And when the Pole subsequently reveals that she has become his obsession, she isn’t sure how she feels or how to respond. Why her? He seems to have something of a Dante-Beatrice fixation, and his obsession with her changes his life. And hers too. Love and art can do that.
Coetzee seems to be having some compassionate fun, and so will the reader.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781324093862
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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
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