A truly unique voice.
A chance reunion with a childhood friend sends a young woman reeling through the surreal taxonomy of her life.
Seven is 24 years old, works in the laundry room of a chiropractor’s office, and still lives at home with her mother and grandmother. Her days consist of a monotony measured in repeated sensation: the “pigskin” texture of the thin towels, the “symphonic” sound of the chiropractor’s urine stream in the laundry room toilet, the jellylike residue of the soap dispenser that “dribbl[es] like a nosebleed” and must be wiped clean every hour. At home, Seven follows similarly long-established rituals, watching television with her mother and her grandmother in the “apartment [they have] been renting since before [she] was born.” Though her mother encourages her to move out on her own someday, there seems to be nothing that could shake Seven from this cycle—which serves to forestall the vision of a girl’s future her grandmother once presented to her: “You’re born. You leave your family before it can eat you. You are eaten by another family and give birth to its children. You make your life a service to others, and in exchange you are never alone with your desires.” Then, while cleaning one of the chiropractor’s treatment rooms, Seven comes face-to-face with Cecilia, a beloved childhood friend and subject of Seven’s most closely guarded fantasies. Cecilia’s reemergence in Seven’s life instigates a flurry of uncontrolled memory wherein the girls’ shared experiments with forbidden sensuality express themselves in Seven’s desire to consume Cecilia’s very being, to enshroud her beloved in the cavities of her body, to become her—if not in this life, then perhaps in the next. An erotic, dissociative exploration of obsession, this slender novella reconfigures desire as a corporeal function as integral as breathing or digestion. While the visceral, disorienting nature of the language sometimes obscures the images themselves, the work of reading this book leaves the reader with the same feeling one has after eating a particularly indulgent meal—satiation, with the knowledge of more hunger to come.
A truly unique voice.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781566897075
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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