by Joel David Levin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 22, 2021
This dramatic tale of life in and outside the music industry hits all the right notes.
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A California high school teacher reflects on his rock-star days and broods about reuniting his band.
In Levin’s follow-up to his novel Incomplete (2020), Brian Smith lives what some would consider an ordinary life. When he’s not teaching Advanced Placement English, he spends time with his wife and their Star Wars–loving 8-year-old daughter. But when his star pupil Veronica Jones interviews him, she dredges up memories of a past Brian abandoned two decades ago. He was once a member of the punk-rock group Call Field, a one-hit wonder from the early aughts. Back then, he and his band mates ecstatically signed a major-label deal. But it was Brian, bassist and chief songwriter, who practically lived at the studio to complete Call Field’s debut album. As with most fledgling music groups, both the label and fans tended to focus their attention on the frontman. In Call Field’s case, that was Steve Öken, a self-absorbed lead vocalist who tried exerting his dominance whenever he could, such as monopolizing the album cover. Not surprisingly, he butted heads with Brian—dissension that threatened the band even before its debut release. After Call Field’s ugly, animosity-laden split, Brian suffered physically and mentally. Yet when he dusts off his guitar 20 years later for his school’s talent show, he misses that exhilaration of playing music onstage. He has the chance to perform again for a benefit concert that Veronica is organizing. But she wants all five members of Call Field there. Brian and his band mates, who haven’t spoken in decades, will have to quell some bad feelings if they want to recapture that punk-rock magic they once had.
While Levin’s sequel centers on Call Field’s short-lived fame, the book is a starkly illuminating peek at the music industry. Brian, for example, toils for months on the album and plays multiple instruments on the tracks. But the record company, despite signing a punk-rock band, mixes the songs for a softer, more commercial sound, highlighting Steve’s vocals. It seems both the label and the lead singer are intent on seizing control of the tunes that Brian rightly considers his. Still, the story is not all scathing. Brian indisputably treasures music, as does the author, who drops in references to countless rock groups along with cameos by such six-stringed beauties as a Gibson SG and a Fender Stratocaster. In the tale’s family-oriented, present-day setting, Levin develops winsome, convincing relationships. Brian’s loving home life with his wife, Mel, and their daughter, Sam, has its ups and downs while good-naturedly brazen Veronica is his biggest fan and “something of a surrogate daughter.” The author, on occasion, shines too bright a spotlight on his metaphors. For example, Mel and a classroom of students separately analyze the oft-quoted lyrics to Call Field’s solitary hit, “Incomplete,” which unquestionably represents Brian’s past. But Levin more often hits the mark, as when Brian calms himself with a treadmill-inspired mantra that becomes the tale’s refrain: “Right foot. Left foot. Repeat.” Numerous uncredited artworks and photographs further elevate this enthralling story, with the standouts including Call Field’s startling album cover and flyers for the group’s appearances.
This dramatic tale of life in and outside the music industry hits all the right notes.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73775-690-3
Page Count: 410
Publisher: Not-So-Silent Librarian Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
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Pulitzer Prize Winner
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
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SEEN & HEARD
by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
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New York Times Bestseller
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
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