A satire that is both only funny and not funny enough.
A farcical comedy that revolves around a deeply dysfunctional family, the strange cosmos of casinos, and nuclear testing in the deserts of Nevada.
Psychologist Steve Nichols has been treating Bill Waterhouse for many years, always confidently unconvinced of his client’s principal grouse in life: Decades ago, Bill witnessed a nuclear test in Nevada at close range, an event he identifies as the sole source of his relentless troubles, which include a terrible stammer and erectile dysfunction. As a therapeutic measure, Nichols helps Bill fill out a governmental claim—a role-playing strategy—but it backfires when Bill in fact files it and receives an enormous payout from the government. Nichols is at first worried he is implicated in a fraud, and then furious that he has no payout of his own, but then he begins to wonder if maybe Bill was telling the truth all along. At the heart of this meandering comedy is the emotionally disheveled Waterhouse clan—Morton, Bill’s 20-something son, is a wayward graduate student in history enamored by Marcus Aurelius, harboring a “private obsession with all things Roman.” He works as a lowly greeter at Caesars Empire casino, forced to don a toga and “plastic aquila scepter.” When the casino attempts a brand makeover under the tutelage of Casinolabs, a “thematic design consultancy,” his academic expertise is noticed, and an opportunity for his own rebranding as a “wunderkind” becomes a possibility.
The author’s humor shines brightest when he satirizes the insipid commercial culture of the casino business. Here, Scarlett, Morton’s sister, explains the future of Caesar’s Empire: “Now Rome can truly rise to its destiny as a kid-friendly, multifarious, multicultural empire. No longer confined to a stuffy Mediterranean peninsula, it goes beyond borders to incorporate all the known world. So it’s more inclusive; its Egyptian, Punic, and Arabian territories are given more meaningful representation.” The “This is Circus-to-the-Maximus” concept is genuinely inventive and funny, as is the entire project to disingenuously mine the past for modern marketing gimmicks. Also, the conclusion of the book, though entirely implausible and disappointingly contrived, has the virtue of being surprisingly unpredictable. However, the novel, for the most part, is a rambling, ill-disciplined mess that conflates an absence of literary structure with comedy. There is hardly a page without a handful of jocular witticisms, and after a short while, this relentless barrage of one-liners becomes utterly exhausting. Finally, the work feels less like a novel and more like a very long standup routine. This is the challenge of such a lightsome farce—there are simply too many jokes, and the reader becomes desensitized to them; as a result of the absence of any gravity, none of the characters ever rise to full development. Some of the author’s jokes land, and there is much in Scrivner’s book that heartily entertains, but even at its best it does little more than that, and therefore never moves past the realm of superficial comedy into something more meaningful.
A satire that is both only funny and not funny enough.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781923104624
Page Count: 373
Publisher: Exeter House Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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