A rollicking satire of contemporary motherhood with a speculative twist.
In Imas’ debut novel, a mother of three discovers her animalistic side.
In Straussville, Oregon, motherhood is turning Harriet “Harry” Lime into a monster—literally. She lives with her husband, Theo, with whom she rarely gets to speak or have sex, a 14-year-old daughter who is turning into a woman faster than Harry can handle, and a pair of 3-year-old twins whose potty training ensures the house always smells faintly of urine. In addition to her familial obligations, she has a “pay the bills” job (rather than a career) in marketing, a walking club, and a book club. Plus, there are regular PTA meetings, which have lately been dominated by discussions concerning an expensive statue dedicated to the mothers of Straussville (and designed in secret by PTA president Patrick Terrence, a grandfather whom Harry has hated since he taught her in high school). When Harry gets an early peek at the underwhelming sculpture—which Terrence has drained money from after-school programs to fund—Harry goes into literal beast mode. She transforms into a massive, apelike animal, uproots the offending statue, and drags it into the Straussville Reservoir. Harry wakes up in the reservoir with no memory of what’s happened, though she can’t shake the feeling she’s responsible for the damage. “[A] single idea came forward and stood apart from it all,” she thinks. “Maybe I hadn’t laid waste to the schoolyard, the old fountain, and the statue. Maybe some giant…creature had done it. And maybe that giant creature had come out of me.” Plenty of neighbors witness the horror, but luckily no one can tie the creature back to her—at least not yet. There are strange uniformed men in town, however, who may be on her trail. What’s more, Harry may not be the only one who is turning into something monstrous.
The novel is driven by Harry’s garrulous narration, which vividly fleshes out her world with descriptions, observations, jokes, and even footnotes. She’s a thoroughly believable suburban mom who balances her sincerity and progressive values with her sometimes-cringey mom humor. Here she praises another mom in the PTA: “She had an autoimmune disorder, I knew, and had gone back to work just weeks after adopting baby Ella. It was the kind of feat that Hercules himself would’ve taken one look at and said, ‘Nah, I’m good.’ ” Here she regrets not helping out another mom who was treated poorly by Terrence: “This didn’t just feel like a Mom-Fail but a Woman-Fail, and in my mind at least, a Friend-Fail too.” That Harry is sometimes hard to take does not make her any less of an achievement. Imas pairs a brilliant premise with a highly memorable narrator, and together they should find a wide readership. The characters are finely drawn, and the speculative aspects of the book are handled quite masterfully. The book takes on not only the hypocrisies of the impossible standards to which mothers are held in America, but also the discourse surrounding those hypocrisies.
A rollicking satire of contemporary motherhood with a speculative twist.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9798988246404
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Mudlark
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
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