Some wonderful writing props up a volume that fails to convey modern love’s scope or diversity.
The seventh volume of Freeman’s eponymous literary journal “celebrates” love, which the former Granta editor calls “the biggest and most complex emotion.”
For many readers today, love is also scarce, since, as Freeman notes in his introduction, “It’s a hard time to believe in love.” Several of these 21 works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry are indeed worth celebrating, especially short stories by Olga Tokarczuk and Gunnhild Øyehaug, whose “Apples,” which charts a woman’s changing loves via a nifty nested narrative, is the volume’s best piece. Nearly half the works eschew romance in favor of either an amorphous love, such as Louise Erdrich’s poem “Stone Love,” about a rock that has “spent a star age...Waiting for you,” or familial love, including Tommy Orange’s brief tour de force, “Guangzhou,” and Daisy Johnson’s standout short story, “The Snowman,” in which a 14-year-old crafts a muddy Christmas golem for her dying sister. “Heaven,” an enthralling excerpt from Mieko Kawakami’s forthcoming novel, captures that same childhood mystique that Johnson channels so well but buries the dread deeper. The anthology’s main shortcoming, and a puzzling one given its theme, is the near total absence of writing about LGBTQ+ love. Fully three-quarters of the volume concerns love between a cisgender man and woman. There are just two entries—totaling eight pages—about nonheterosexual relationships: Daniel Mendelsohn’s piece on how insomnia takes him places his lovers can never follow and Andrew McMillan’s spectacular poem “swan,” about grappling with his sexuality. Also conspicuous is the lack of any Black male authors, an omission exacerbated by the inclusion of stale stories from Richard Russo and Haruki Murakami, neither of whom is crafting terribly original fiction or wanting for an audience at this point in their lengthy careers.
Some wonderful writing props up a volume that fails to convey modern love’s scope or diversity.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-5783-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quick, biting critique of the publishing industry.
What happens when a midlist author steals a manuscript and publishes it as her own?
June Hayward and Athena Liu went to Yale together, moved to D.C. after graduation, and are both writers, but the similarities end there. While June has had little success since publication and is struggling to write her second novel, Athena has become a darling of the publishing industry, much to June’s frustration. When Athena suddenly dies, June, almost accidentally, walks off with her latest manuscript, a novel about the World War I Chinese Labour Corps. June edits the novel and passes it off as her own, and no one seems the wiser, but once the novel becomes a smash success, cracks begin to form. When June faces social media accusations and staggering writer’s block, she can’t shake the feeling that someone knows the truth about what she’s done. This satirical take on racism and success in the publishing industry at times veers into the realm of the unbelievable, but, on the whole, witnessing June’s constant casual racism and flimsy justifications for her actions is somehow cathartic. Yes, publishing is like this; finally someone has written it out. At times, the novel feels so much like a social media feed that it’s impossible to stop reading—what new drama is waiting to unfold. and who will win out in the end? An incredibly meta novel, with commentary on everything from trade reviews to Twitter, the ultimate message is clear from the start, which can lead to a lack of nuance. Kuang, however, does manage to leave some questions unanswered: fodder, perhaps, for a new tweetstorm.
A quick, biting critique of the publishing industry.Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9780063250833
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A rollicking soap opera that keeps the pages turning with a surfeit of births, deaths, and surprising plot reveals.
Historical fiction concerning the intricate battles over succession within the family that controls a poor rural county in post–World War I Virginia.
Duke Kincaid owns most of Claiborne County, both financially and politically. A charming, ruthless autocrat, feared yet beloved, he has three acknowledged children by three different wives (not to mention unacknowledged offspring). Shortly after his fourth marriage, the Duke dies unexpectedly. Although pragmatic, street-smart middle child Sallie is his intellectual and emotional heir, the Duke leaves his estate to her emotionally oversensitive half brother, Eddie, because he’s the only boy. Seventeen-year-old Sallie is devoted to Eddie, who's 13, but after he commits suicide she's torn by conflicting loyalties to her weak but lovable stepmother; her father’s scheming but able sister; and her older half sister, Mary, who's next in line to inherit the Kincaid empire but has not lived in Claiborne Country since her parents divorced. Family intrigue plays out against the backdrop of 1920s Claiborne County, where racism is a given, Prohibition is the law, and bootlegging is the main source of income for Blacks and Whites. Staunch prohibitionist Mary goes to war against the bootleggers using an enforcer who employs extreme violence. Sallie wants to support her sister but sympathizes with the bootleggers—her neighbors and tenants—and recognizes that the family's finances depend on trading whiskey. Defining what is moral becomes complicated for Sallie. So does defining family. Tough and independent, Sallie refuses to let womanhood limit her ambitions as she earns the nickname Queen of the Kincaid Rumrunners. History buffs will enjoy the many hints Walls sprinkles to show that Tudor England is her novel’s template (the Duke’s marriage to his brother’s widow; his banished daughter, Mary, and short-lived heir, Edward; the Kincaids’ counselor Cecil, etc.). Television buffs will smile at the Kincaids’ resemblance to the Roys of Succession.
A rollicking soap opera that keeps the pages turning with a surfeit of births, deaths, and surprising plot reveals.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781501117299
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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