Crystalline (and enjoyable for it) but ultimately inexpressive work by one of the most intriguing American fiction...
Francis Clemens—Frank—is having an affair with Josephine Felielle—Billy. Both of them are married to other people.
They're both involved with economics professionally, they live in New York, they are attached to their spouses by both conviction and honor, and these spouses are often away. So much for similarities. Otherwise, Frank is a sensualist about clothes and food, Billy a slob whose shoes are taped together and who has nothing in her refrigerator. She's laconic and unsentimental; he's the more unbuttoned of the two. They are, in fact, a sort of Odd Couple—wherein is found a good deal of the charm in these five connected if not quite connecting stories by the ever-interesting Colwin (Happy All The Time, Family Happiness). Until Billy calls a conscience-driven halt to the liaison, they both are happy ("as happy as it is possible to be under those circumstances, which bring the kind of happiness that is devoid of any contentment"). Yet, as Colwin's shading warns early on (and readers may notice that Frank is always the narrator of the morally dubious stories, Billy of the post-sin ones: a sort of stacking of the deck): "It is one of the sobering realizations of adult life that love is often not a propellant...It often seems that the function of romance is to give people something romantic to think about." The stories mean to be anti-romantic, in fact; there's far more snacking that goes on than lovemaking; and at one point, Billy's reactions to her own adultery are balanced-out at "sorrow, guilt, glee, humor, anticipation." The problem is that you don't believe an awful lot of it. Francis comes off as too unconscious, almost brutally level, plumb-lined; while Billy seems to be less a lover than a treader of water, going through the motions of infatuation until she can make for the open sea and have the secure-marriage-with-baby that she's destined for (and does get, post-Frank). Partially this is the overlap's fault—the segments don't seem quite well-aligned enough—but there's also a touch of smugness here that seeps out at the edges of cool delight to Colwin's always truly impressive comic-prose style. Frank seems a strawman set up to then be knocked down; and both Frank and Billy seem to be going through what's finally only a self-restricting acrobatic trick, one of some difficulty but without the sweat. Family Happiness showed Colwin able to approach a Russian-like miscellany of a-directional feeling—and while no one would expect her to duplicate Anna Karenina, it is somewhat surprising to find so little dirt under her authorial nails when dealing with a subject this compromised and unstable.
Crystalline (and enjoyable for it) but ultimately inexpressive work by one of the most intriguing American fiction writers—here coasting.Pub Date: March 31, 1986
ISBN: 0-06-095894-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
© 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.
