A cleverly executed story about finding answers in one’s past.
In Vidal’s cerebral debut novel, a man finds a book about a former lover that reshapes the story of his own life.
In 1953, Andrés Santaella met a 20-year-old woman named Leire Quirós in a police station in southern Spain. The young lawyer was hired to represent her as she faced charges of helping her parents plunder a sunken shipwreck. Released into Andrés’ custody, Leire began an affair with her lawyer, but she later vanished from his life. About two decades later, Andrés visits a bookstore in New York City where he comes across a book called The Sphere of Time, with no writer credited, but with Leire’s picture on the cover: “This is a biography, my mother’s, ruled by strange forces which control our lives: chance and chaos,” reads the jacket. “It is a story about the passing of time, about memory, about dreams cut short and about death; a story that blends illusion and reality, just like any other.” In the book, Andrés learns about aspects of Leire’s background for the first time—as well as an account of himself and their affair. Then he comes across a detail he never knew: that Leire was pregnant with his child when she disappeared. With the book as his guide, Andrés sets out to reconnect with Leire and their child, who would now be an adult. However, this journey proves to be more difficult than he thought it would be. Over the course of this book, Vidal writes in a dreamy prose style that perfectly shifts between Andrés’ present and the various narratives contained in Leire’s biography.There are moments when the book-within-a-book structure results in a lack of clarity, but it generally makes for an engrossing read. Vidal leans into the gauziness of his fictional world, playing games with time and memory in ways that are often bittersweet. Some will likely find the novel overly sentimental—and there are moments when it surely is—but those who enjoy the subtle magic of an unlikely story will find much to appreciate.
A cleverly executed story about finding answers in one’s past.Pub Date: July 27, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Pàmies
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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