A haunting and poignant reflection on grief, spirituality, and the loving bonds that provide guidance and sustenance.
Folk offers a complex novel that gradually reveals the individual and intertwined stories of several women.
Fifteen-year-old Samantha, in first-person narration, begins this mystical, often ethereal, tale about relationships in 1986, the final year of the novel’s chronology. As the book opens, she and her mother, Mira, are visiting her mom’s younger sister, Etta—the eponymous Aphrodite. Etta gives Sam a blank journal to help her sort out her feelings of teenage angst; however, much of her writing will be about her intriguing aunt. Mira is the more traditional of the two sisters, while Etta is the almost-free spirit who defies convention. She’s now living with Patrick, an artist who considers her his “muse.” After years of distress over Etta’s free lifestyle, Mira has finally come to accept her sister for who she is. But there is more sorrow to come: Mira, who’s still mourning the death of her mother, is about to experience another devastating loss. The narrative undertakes a back-and-forth jog through the previous two decades. Third-person narration, which alternates with Samantha’s voice, fills in the early years of Etta’s back story, beginning in 1968 and running through the 1970s. Leaping forward again to 1986, readers meet Mira and Sam’s neighbor, Joan, whose teenage daughter, Elise, disappeared 10 years ago; Joan tells Sam that Elise usually visits in the spring, and readers learn through Joan’s and Elise’s back stories that these visits are spiritual apparitions. Folk, the author of Totem Beasts (2017), peppers her artfully composed story with religious and mythological references. The coastal Massachusetts setting effectively frames one of her themes: the mystery, majesty, and inspirational magic of the sea and its creatures. The frequent switching of time frames and back stories is structurally interesting, even if it also adversely affects the pacing of the narrative. In the end, however, what at first appear to be separate tales coalesce, and it’s revealed that it is young Samantha who, through her words and art, will carry forward the legacy of Etta—“the goddess we’ve left behind.”
A haunting and poignant reflection on grief, spirituality, and the loving bonds that provide guidance and sustenance.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-59954-150-1
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Bordighera Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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