Stirringly emotional storytelling.
A debut collection of short stories explores the lives of ordinary people with a focus on heartache, illness, and bereavement.
Fourteen tales are offered in this volume. The opening story, “A Prayer at the Sandbar,” examines the world from the perspective of a breast cancer survivor who is confronted by the sight of topless women during a visit to the beach. This is followed by “You’re Still Here,” in which a mother whose young, adopted daughter is experiencing night terrors reflects on her life and relationships. In “Something Grand,” a neighborhood church fire finds a widow facing the prospect of holding a makeshift funeral service for her religious husband in the school gym. Meanwhile, “Gravestones” is about a Jewish woman who volunteers to help maintain a cemetery only to find a grave bearing the name of an unrequited love. And “Purge,” which deals with self-harm, introduces a woman who decides to throw out unnecessary possessions. The collection closes with “Taking Notes,” in which a wife comes across love letters from a woman prior to going on vacation with her husband. Smith builds convincing psychological worlds in which her characters wrestle with life’s tribulations. Often the challenges faced are not immediately evident. In this emotionally intuitive, if bleak, assemblage, the author creates an atmosphere of unease by deploying hazy lines such as “Water can do that to me—erase the world around me and all my connections.” Smith discloses further information with subtle skill—for instance, it becomes clear that the narrator in “A Prayer at the Sandbar” is a cancer survivor when she ponders the reactions to her “saline implants, tattooed nipples, and scars on view.” The author’s characters are human enough for readers to share their pain. When Roberta Levine in “Gravestones” considers missing out on the love of her life, her sense of mournful regret is truly palpable: “Isn’t it funny how a chance comes once? Isn’t it funny how a person could not know that? How with one silly move, one silly answer, a person’s future could be determined?” Smith’s writing may not be for everyone, as moments of levity are scarce, but this remains an expert collection by a deeply perceptive writer.
Stirringly emotional storytelling.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73617-674-0
Page Count: 167
Publisher: 7.13 Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.
An undergraduate at Brown University unearths the buried history of a Latine artist.
As in her bestselling debut, Olga Dies Dreaming (2022), Gonzalez shrewdly anatomizes racial and class hierarchies. Her bifurcated novel begins at a posh art-world party in 1985 as the title character, a Cuban American land and body artist, garners recognition that threatens the ego of her older, more famous husband, white minimalist sculptor Jack Martin. The story then shifts to Raquel Toro, whose working-class, Puerto Rican background makes her feel out of place among the “Art History Girls” who easily chat with professors and vacation in Europe. Nonetheless, in the spring of 1998, Raquel wins a prestigious summer fellowship at the Rhode Island School of Design, and her faculty adviser is enthusiastic about her thesis on Jack Martin, even if she’s not. Soon she’s enjoying the attentions of Nick Fitzsimmons, a well-connected, upper-crust senior. As Raquel’s story progresses, Anita’s first-person narrative acquires a supernatural twist following the night she falls from the window of their apartment —“jumped? or, could it be, pushed?”—but it’s grimly realistic in its exploration of her toxic relationship with Jack. (A dedication, “In memory of Ana,” flags the notorious case of sculptor Carl Andre, tried and acquitted for the murder of his wife, artist Ana Mendieta.) Raquel’s affair with Nick mirrors that unequal dynamic when she adapts her schedule and appearance to his whims, neglecting her friends and her family in Brooklyn. Gonzalez, herself a Brown graduate, brilliantly captures the daily slights endured by someone perceived as Other, from microaggressions (Raquel’s adviser refers to her as “Mexican”) to brutally racist behavior by the Art History Girls. While a vividly rendered supporting cast urges Raquel to be true to herself and her roots, her research on Martin leads to Anita’s art and the realization that she belongs to a tradition that’s been erased from mainstream art history.
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781250786210
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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