A fine addition to the L’Heureux canon.
A well-to-do couple is challenged by charity in this posthumous novel.
When David and Maggie Holliss, out walking their dog, first meet the aspiring novelist Reginald Parker, it’s 2001, and “they looked like what they were: a couple suspended between middle and old age, happy, wealthy, content. And comfortably godless.” David is a soon-to-retire literature professor at Stanford; Maggie is a minor heiress; and their marriage is “a meeting of minds and hearts that excluded everybody else, even their children.” But when, in 2009, Reginald—still an aspiring novelist—leaps in front of a UPS truck to save their dog’s life and then promptly asks a grateful Maggie for a $200 loan, the Hollisses’ prosperous solitude is unexpectedly imperiled. In addition to his novelistic ambitions, Reginald is a narcissist, petty criminal, and freeloader who feels simultaneously insulted by and entitled to David and Maggie’s ready charity. He cadges the Hollisses for more loans—to support his family, to support his drug habit, and to punish them for their willingness to give. He also embarks on an affair with Claire, the Hollisses' caustic middle-aged daughter, and eventually deploys his own neglected child, Iris, as a pawn, first to guilt the Hollisses into giving more money, then to punish them for their refusal to give any more of it. Working in Iris Murdoch’s frantically plotted tradition, L’Heureux uses a deft, omniscient narration to highlight the little human hypocrisies within his characters and the blatant miscommunications that define their relationships. The result is a roller coaster of a novel that—despite some missteps—generally treads a careful line between comedy and caricature while engaging in a poignant commentary on the interplay between charity and justice. Early on, when Claire tells the story about how she tried to become a nun but disagreed with the Mother Superior’s emphasis on charitable acts rather than justice—“Justice includes charity because charity has to be earned,” Claire states, “it has to be deserved”—David seems to speak for the reader when he decides he’s “never heard such an exercise in sloppy thinking.” By the novel’s end, however, readers might be wondering whether Claire, unbeknownst to herself, was on to something.
A fine addition to the L’Heureux canon.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-14-313523-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.
What hasn’t legendary legal eagle Grisham tried yet? How about a thriller about serial kidnapping and international terrorism.
When Paul and Chelsea Tanner disappear during a day trip on their Paris honeymoon, their abductors demand a ransom of $2 million from Chelsea’s wealthy parents, and a few days later the same sum from Paul’s much less well-heeled parents. After orthopedist Lowell Clayburn, Chelsea’s father, ponies up the ransom without breathing a word to the authorities, his daughter is promptly released. But even though Paul’s parents sell their home, liquidate their assets, and borrow money from the Clayburns to meet the kidnappers’ demands, the villains hold on to Paul anyway. Asked whether he’s ever seen such an outcome in a double kidnapping, FBI deputy director Andrew Strong tells Lowell: “No, this is a new one.” But it’s not, as Strong knows all too well; it’s the third such active case, all involving honeymooning couples whose bridegrooms had served in the armed forces. After masterfully drawing readers in with his bare-knuckle account of the Tanners’ abduction and the attempt by their families and the CIA to tell the lies required to keep caring friends and the rapacious press at bay, Grisham effortlessly switches gears to follow CIA agent Rae Claire Russo and Stuart Nash, a former Department of Justice prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay who agrees to marry her so they can serve as bait for the kidnappers, whose motives include justice and revenge as well as cold hard cash. So much for the imprisoned Paul’s wistful reflection that “hopefully, it was only about money.”
The story unfolds so irresistibly that newcomers may think Grisham’s been writing thrillers like this his whole life.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550543
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2026
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.
A phone call from her past disrupts the tenuously reconstructed life of a concert pianist turned farmer’s wife.
We know from the beginning that Livia Cable is the battered survivor of her brother Cyrus’ death by suicide, a devastating romance, and a career-ending injury. Only 11 when Cyrus stepped in front of a train, she was already marked out as different in her rural Tennessee hometown by her extraordinary musical ability. The siblings had huddled together against their angry mother’s frequent beatings, and Livia still feels abandoned by Cyrus years later, when she picks up the phone to hear the voice of Sigurd, the fiery labor organizer she loved and lost to “the revolution” while on scholarship at the Indiana University School of Music. Now married to kind, steady childhood friend Charlie, Livia looks back on her affair with Sigurd as she struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother, a compulsive hoarder who left a house stuffed with junk to be disposed of and bitter memories that haven’t faded over time. Kingsolver skillfully juggles the two time frames to unravel Livia’s complicated feelings about the life she lost when her right hand was crushed and the life she has now as a country piano teacher. A partita, she explains to Sigurd early on, “is a composition made of a lot of parts with a lot of different moods…the artist’s work is to make them all add up to something that feels whole.” That’s precisely what Kingsolver does in this beautifully paced and judged narrative, which builds to revelations uncovered amid the piles of trash in Livia’s childhood home about the reasons for Cyrus’ suicide (clearly foreshadowed) and their mother’s rage (startling and heartbreaking). A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement.
Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780063577541
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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