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
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: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
