A meditative tale about rediscovering one’s true self that will appeal to readers reaching midlife.
In this novel, a recent empty nester struggles with whether to leave her husband as she searches for a more fulfilling life.
Shortly after Jennifer’s two children reach young adulthood and move out of the house, she realizes she’s not interested in staying trapped in a mediocre relationship with her husband, Mark. Just as she prepares to tell Mark that they should separate, Jenn’s father shows up, announcing that her mother has died. No longer the time to seek a divorce, Jenn retreats into herself. When she stumbles on old diaries from her youth, she remembers her first love, Thomas “Tripp” Porter. As she reminisces about their great romance, she searches for him on social media and discovers that he messaged her seven years earlier through Facebook. She responds to the message and receives a reply almost instantly. In the decades since they’ve seen each other, Tripp has also married and built a life for himself. Even so, the pair begin communicating via text and phone, and Jenn feels seen for the first time in years. She even works up the nerve to speak to Mark about her discontent, and they begin counseling. As Jenn tries to find her true self, she experiments with moving out of the house and enjoying the freedom of sexual exploration with other partners. She’s on a mission to discover what will finally satisfy her. Told entirely in the first person from Jenn’s perspective, Pursell’s book reads more like a memoir than a novel, with a great deal of introspection and reflection on past events (“Memories are an amazing thing. They allow us to hold on to a part of our past in powerful ways”). Similarly, limited details about the setting throughout the story lead the narration to feel more like diary entries. The author tackles difficult issues of how adults should approach the later portions of their lives and how to balance second chances against the idea of starting fresh, taking a deep dive into those questions with insight and grace. As the story progresses, so too does the explicit sexual content, which unfortunately begins to feel clinical and awkward instead of steamy. Even so, the narrator’s journey toward her own truth will likely speak to many 50-somethings considering their own life paths.
A meditative tale about rediscovering one’s true self that will appeal to readers reaching midlife.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2023
ISBN: 9781639887958
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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