An evocative, sometimes-shocking novel that’s slow to unfold.
In Robinson’s latest novel, a parolee struggles to forge a new life for himself in his decaying rural hometown.
Bilbo is a fictional small town situated somewhere on the Appalachian Trail. It has just one street, known to the locals as “Only Street,” and is the kind of place those passing through look forward to seeing in their rearview mirrors. Timewall Speaks has just been released from prison after serving two and a half years for stealing a beer. Although a seemingly minor misdemeanor, his parole officer delights in reminding him that his buddy had a gun, making it a felony, and Timewall “popped” the cop that came to arrest them. Returning to Bilbo, Timewall moves in with his mother, Blaize, a straight-talking hellcat who hangs out with bikers. He is sent to work at a car wash run by Roger Qualls, whom Timewall has detested since high school. Forced to accept less than minimum wage, the parolee is eager to find a way out of the dead-end job, whereas Roger is keen to settle a vendetta and help send Timewall back to prison. Timewall steals and restores an old vending machine from the car wash storeroom and sets it up in the woods, catering to hikers on the Appalachian Trail. He is astonished at how much money the machine makes him. A twist of fate also sees him return to school to study; but Bilbo’s shady underworld of drugs and corruption holds the power to ruin his progress.
Themes explored by Robinson in previous works—hiking, rural Appalachia, and escaping confining realities—intersect here with varying degrees of success. The author remains a master at building elaborately described worlds populated by psychologically believable characters. With stunning attention to detail, the novel transports the reader directly to the grubby parole office: “The desk was gray metal, rusty scratches, the paint worn at the corners from ages of passing hips.” A shrewd description of Buster, the parole officer, is an intentionally uncomfortable close-up, serving to emphasize the character’s suffocating demeanor: “Buster’s pate was as pink as undercooked chicken, his prickly face slick with some kind of lotion.” In his afterword, Robinson acknowledges that “there could be much to offer offense” in this novel. Certainly, Blaize’s blatant racism regarding President Barack Obama’s leaving office would verify the author’s statement: “At least we got that nigger out of there.” Robinson argues that “some offensive material” was necessary “to set the tone,” stating that “the world of the rural poor is not a pretty place.” Some readers will find such elements of the novel uncomfortable, whereas others may feel that Robinson is unfairly stereotyping a specific strata of rural society. In Timewall, Robinson has created a character that the reader hopes will find a better life—which makes for mildly compelling reading. But the book is snail-paced, and despite being beautifully descriptive, many will grow bored waiting for something significant to happen.
An evocative, sometimes-shocking novel that’s slow to unfold.Pub Date: July 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9996042-5-0
Page Count: 298
Publisher: HighlandHome Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2020
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
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.
A love triangle among young literati has a long and complicated aftermath.
King’s narrator doesn’t reveal her name until the very last page, but Sam and Yash, the brainy stars of her 17th-century literature class, call her Jordan. Actually, at first they refer to her as Daisy, for Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby, but when they learn she came to their unnamed college on a golf scholarship, they change it to Jordan for Gatsby’s golfer friend. The boys are housesitting for a professor who’s spending a year at Oxford, living in a cozy, book-filled Victorian Jordan visits for the first time after watching The Deer Hunter at the student union on her first date with Sam. As their relationship proceeds, Jordan is practically living at the house herself, trying hard not to notice that she’s actually in love with Yash. A Baptist, Sam has an everything-but policy about sex that only increases the tension. The title of the book refers to a nickname for the king of hearts from an obscure card game the three of them play called Sir Hincomb Funnibuster, and both the game and variations on the moniker recur as the novel spins through and past Jordan’s senior year, then decades into the future. King is a genius at writing love stories—including Euphoria (2014), which won the Kirkus Prize—and her mostly sunny version of the campus novel is an enjoyable alternative to the current vogue for dark academia. Tragedies are on the way, though, as we know they must be, since nothing gold can stay and these darn fictional characters seem to make the same kinds of stupid mistakes that real people do. Tenderhearted readers will soak the pages of the last chapter with tears.
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780802165176
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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