An offbeat and gripping novel of family pain.
In Goldberg’s novel of the past and present, a 19th-century man finds himself in modern-day Alaska.
In 2020, a mysterious man finds himself stranded in the freezing wilderness. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there, or even his name. He’s about to be eaten by a pack of wolves when a pair of hunters save him by shooting off their guns. From a distance, the man notices that one of the hunters looks exactly like him; he hides and sneaks into the back of the hunters’ truck. It ends up in Laner, Alaska, where Travis Barlow, the look-alike, lives with his wife, Callie, and their son, Eli. Travis’ father, Stu, is the town sheriff, and Travis’ grandfather Clifford lives nearby. Travis once had a brother, Bobby, whose cause of death remains a mystery. The newcomer finds a journal in his coat, which helps his memory. His name is Wyatt Barlow, and in 1898, he left his Washington farm to seek gold in Alaska. He determines that he must be a Barlow ancestor who somehow ended up in the future; he also misses his wife and son and recalls a horrible crime he committed. At first, Wyatt scavenges around Laner for food and shelter while taking trips to Travis’ house to spy on the family: “Is this the wife and son he craves?” Eventually, Wyatt presents himself to Travis, who experiences “the awe that a doppelgänger can unearth.” The moment gives them the feeling of “eras colliding.” Travis helps Wyatt get a job, and he, too, becomes fascinated by his double. Travis has been in a rut, and Wyatt’s presence fills him with a sense of adventure, but Wyatt’s plans are less clear as he plots his own future.
Over the course of this novel, Goldberg demonstrates an impressive command of his ensemble, smoothly differentiating multiple characters and detailing their arcs through time. He always keeps the plot moving forward, even when characters turn to the past, such as Stu, who can’t let go of Bobby’s death, and Wyatt, who wishes his wife and child had followed him to the present. Moments of humor brighten the story, as when Wyatt, at length, recalls a fellow traveler correctly identifying him as a gold-rusher: “What gave it away?” Wyatt asks. The man replies, “There ain’t a stench of fish or God on ya.” At other points, Goldberg’s writing is more meditative and reaches an impressive level of emotional clarity, as when Travis considers the sea: “This ocean that brings the town life, but has taken it away too. The final resting place for his brother who went out high on bad shit. He never stood a chance, not even from birth.” The small-town setting, the family dynamics, and the abnormal circumstances of Wyatt’s arrival result in a story that blends the familiar and the supernatural in a manner that call Stephen King’s work to mind. That said, Goldberg’s book possesses a flavor all its own—a distinctive mélange of the sincere and the strange.
An offbeat and gripping novel of family pain.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64396-114-9
Page Count: 329
Publisher: All Due Respect
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”
A stranger comes to town, and a beloved storyteller plays this creative-writing standby for all it’s worth.
Hilderbrand fans, a vast and devoted legion, will remember Blond Sharon, the notorious island gossip. In what is purportedly the last of the Nantucket novels, Blond Sharon decides to pursue her lifelong dream of fiction writing. In the collective opinion of the island—aka the “cobblestone telegraph”—she’s qualified. “Well, we think, she’s certainly demonstrated her keen interest in other people’s stories, the seedier and more salacious, the better.” Blond Sharon’s first assignment in her online creative writing class is to create a two-person character study, and Hilderbrand has her write up the two who arrive on the ferry in an opening scene of the book, using the same descriptors Hilderbrand has. Amusingly, the class is totally unimpressed. “‘I found it predictable,’ Willow said. ‘Like maybe Sharon used ChatGPT with the prompt “Write a character study about two women getting off the ferry, one prep and one punk.”’” Blond Sharon abandons these characters, but Hilderbrand thankfully does not. They are Kacy Kapenash, daughter of retiring police chief Ed Kapenash (the other swan song referred to by the title), and her new friend Coco Coyle, who has given up her bartending job in the Virgin Islands to become a “personal concierge” for the other strangers-who-have-come-to-town. These are the Richardsons, Bull and Leslee, a wild and wealthy couple who have purchased a $22 million beachfront property and plan to take Nantucket by storm. As the book opens, their house has burned down during an end-of-summer party on their yacht, and Coco is missing, feared both responsible for the fire and dead. Though it’s the last weekend of his tenure, Chief Ed refuses to let the incoming chief, Zara Washington, take this one over. The investigation goes forward in parallel with a review of the summer’s intrigues, love affairs, and festivities. Whatever else you can say about Leslee Richardson, she knows how to throw a party, and Hilderbrand is just the writer to design her invitations, menus, themes, playlists, and outfits. And that hot tub!
Though Hilderbrand threatens to kill all our darlings with this last laugh, her acknowledgments say it’s just “for now.”Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9780316258876
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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
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