An immersive story with striking prose.
A young woman and her mother become targets of the witch hunts of 17th-century England.
Rebecca West and her mother are working to make ends meet as seamstresses in poverty-stricken Manningtree, England, a village filled with women who gossip, bicker, and attempt to care for their families as the men are away fighting in the country’s numerous wars. Rebecca is quietly in love with the town clerk, John Edes, whom she meets with regularly to study Scripture and learn to read. But once Matthew Hopkins, a man who comes to be known as the Witchfinder, arrives, suspicion brews between neighbors, especially when a child is taken ill and Hopkins suspects witches are consorting with the devil. Rebecca, her mother, and numerous other village women are arrested and jailed for more than a year before their trial, as Hopkins works to shore up witnesses, including John Edes. In Blakemore’s debut novel, her background as a poet is clear. The language is striking, full of distinctive insights regarding gender, truth, and religious devotion even as the narrative perspective shifts from Rebecca to Hopkins to varying townspeople. Rebecca’s voice as she narrates the fates of the women on trial for witchcraft is unapologetic and luminous, and her mother’s defiance and love for her daughter are fierce; as she tells Rebecca, “Witch is just their nasty word for anyone who makes things happen, who moves the story along.” The sections in which Hopkins contemplates his manipulative investigations are duller and slow the plot’s momentum, especially toward the end. Still, historical fiction has rarely felt so immediate.
An immersive story with striking prose.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64622-064-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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
Saunders has crafted a novel that feels deeply resonant, especially in these fractious times.
Saunders’ second novel represents a magnificent expansion of consciousness.
Unfolding over the course of a single evening, as oil baron K.J. Boone lies on his deathbed, the narrative develops almost entirely in the interior, while encompassing a dizzying exteriority as well. At its center are two characters, one deceased and the other soon to be. The latter, of course, is Boone, a man with much to answer for, although he doesn’t believe that. The other is Jill “Doll” Blaine, the narrator, who died young and has returned to earth from the spirit realm—as she has 343 times since her own demise—to help him make the crossing. If such concerns appear to recall those of the author’s first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), that both is and isn’t the case. Yes, as the book progresses, it ranges widely, with a variety of ghosts and spirits emerging to comment on or participate in Boone’s final reckoning. At the same time, it’s a sparer work than its predecessor. This has to do with Jill, who moves from memories of her life to engagement with Boone. Always, she reveals empathy and insight, even as his final hours become a dark night of the soul. “No: this, this now, was me,” she tells us: “vast, unlimited in the range and delicacy of my voice, unrestrained in love, rapid in apprehension, skillful in motion, capable, equally, of traversing, within a few seconds’ time, a mile or ten thousand miles.” What she (or, through her, Saunders) is suggesting is the need for generosity, despite, or perhaps because of, Boone’s corrupted soul, which has been riven by a lifetime wallowing in many of the deadly sins, particularly pride and greed. Such openness has long been a hallmark of Saunders’ fiction, and it’s on full display in this elegant and subtle book. “At such moments,” Jill reflects, “I especially cherished my task. I could comfort.”
Saunders has crafted a novel that feels deeply resonant, especially in these fractious times.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9780525509622
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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