by Klara Hveberg ; translated by Alison McCullough ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2021
A novel of interior spaces that plumbs the depths of loneliness in order to find within it the origins of love.
A debut novel, translated from Norwegian, that explores love as an infinite fractal set, bound only by the dimensions that it invents.
Rakel is the only child of two devoted but unhappy parents. Her mother emigrated from Asia—leaving behind her work, her culture, and her language—in order to marry her father but has found it nearly impossible to acclimate to Norway’s racially homogenous culture. Her father dotes on Rakel but doesn’t understand the pressure she feels to keep her fearful mother safe. As Rakel grows, her propensity for logic puzzles and natural affinity for the patterns of music resolve themselves into a near virtuoso talent for conceptual mathematics. She moves to Oslo to attend the university and quickly meets Jakob Krogstad, a professor who has captured her attention through an article he wrote about the 19th-century Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya. Jakob is quick to appreciate the uniqueness of Rakel’s mind, and what begins as a mentorship slowly develops into a consuming romance. In spite of the fact that Jakob is married and has two small daughters, Rakel persuades herself that their relationship cannot be immoral because it is being undertaken in the service of true love. She agrees to wait eight years, at which point Jakob’s children will be older and they will be able to love each other openly. As time passes, Rakel’s career soars and her love for Jakob solidifies, but her health declines precipitously from an undiagnosable illness that leaves her frequently bedridden. She is forced to spend more and more time in isolation, too exhausted to live a life outside of the rich one found in her naturally inquisitive mind. The novel progresses in fragments of thought and impression. Small scenes become the gateways for passages of philosophy that stake their existential discourse about identity, space, time, and individuality on the mathematical theories that are Rakel’s solace as her autonomous life grounds to a halt in the grip of her illness. In another author’s hands, Rakel’s stasis—her physical and emotional inability to move beyond the intensity of her feelings for Jakob—might be frustrating. For Hveberg, the imbalance between Rakel’s richly evoked interior life and the lack of agency she wields in her experiences provides an opportunity to delve into the character’s vibrant intellect without diluting the reader’s sense of Rakel as a character whose joys and sorrows reflect our own.
A novel of interior spaces that plumbs the depths of loneliness in order to find within it the origins of love.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-303832-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
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New York Times Bestseller
by Tana French ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
An absorbing crime yarn.
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New York Times Bestseller
A divorced American detective tries to blend into rural Ireland in this sequel to The Searcher (2020).
In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there might be gold in the nearby mountain with a vein that might run through some of their properties. (What, no leprechauns?) “It’s not sheep shite you’ll be smelling in a few months’ time, man,” he tells a farmer. “It’s champagne and caviar.” Some people have fun fantasizing about sudden riches, but they know better. Johnny’s pursuer, Cillian Rushborough, comes to town, and Johnny tries to convince him he could get rich by purchasing people’s land. Alas, someone bashes Rushborough’s brains in, and now there’s a murder mystery. The plot is a bit of a stretch, but the characters and their relationships work well. Trey detests Johnny for not being in her life, and now that he’s back, she neither wants nor needs him. She gets on much better with Cal. Still, she’s a testy teenager when she thinks someone is not treating her like an adult. Cal is aware of this, and he’s careful how he talks to her. Johnny, not so much: “I swear to fuck, women are only put on this earth to wreck our fuckin’ heads,” he whines about Trey’s mother, briefly forgetting he’s talking to Trey. The book abounds in local color and lively dialogue.
An absorbing crime yarn.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593493434
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
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Best Books Of 2022
New York Times Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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