A collection that delivers a strange and ultimately satisfying ride.
This free-wheeling anthology offers a variety of characters, settings, and genres.
At first glance, the novellas in Book 2 of this third installment of a series seem disparate enough to be deemed eclectic. The six range in length and tone. The collection—edited by Lockwood (Frontal Matter, 2019, etc.) and Kastner (Running Wild Novella Anthology: Volume 3, Book 1, 2019, etc.)—opens with Circuits End by Rasmenia Massoud. The story focuses on a tough-talking painter working a dead-end job at a Colorado circuit factory, trying to make her way in life after breaking up with her longtime boyfriend. Then, readers take a sharp turn into the fantastical with an eerie fairy tale called Doctor Porchiat’s Dream by Frankie Rollins that follows the adventures of a quirky physician in a superstitious town as he chases scientific proof of the soul. That spell is quickly broken by the cutting-edge modernity of Kastner’s Newly Minted Wings: Craig’s List Nikky, which follows a PR maven called Nicole (nicknamed Nikky) who resurrects the careers of desperate Craigslist posters with extravagant stunts. She must reassess her life once her wealthy parents cut her off and she gets the chance to work with one of her idols. Nicole’s privileged world is quickly replaced by the tender contemplation of Kenneth Holt’s The Cups That Hold, about the unlikely connection forged between a black groundskeeper and his white teenage charge during a summer job in 1977. After that, readers must contend with Patrick Breheny’s Like a Human, a futuristic trip featuring a robot called Howie. He believes he can ingratiate himself with humans enough to enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle and one day conquer the world. The energetic collection closes with Ace Boggess’ Somewhat Misunderstood, a satirical, biting thought exercise that considers how readers would respond to the seeming reemergence of Jesus. Taken together, what connects these mostly engaging stories are a sympathy and humor for life’s outcasts—from a down-on-his-luck kid in the ’70s to an overly ambitious robot in the near future. While some of the tales, like Doctor Porchiat’s Dream, make full use of the novella form by deftly exploring the perspectives of various characters, others, such as Newly Minted Wings, feel half formed. Wings ends on a cliffhanger after six chapters of minor character development. Still, the anthology is always entertaining and lives up to its title.
A collection that delivers a strange and ultimately satisfying ride.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947041-40-0
Page Count: 318
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends,...
Before sobriety, Catherine "Cat" Coombs had it all: fun friends, an exciting job, and a love affair with alcohol. Until she blacked out one more time and woke up in a stranger’s bed.
By that time, “having it all” had already devolved into hiding the extent of her drinking from everyone she cared about, including herself. Luckily for Cat, the stranger turned out to be Jason Halliwell, a rather delicious television director marking three years, eight months, and 69 days of sobriety. Inspired by Jason—or rather, inspired by the prospect of a romantic relationship with this handsome hunk—Cat joins him at AA meetings and embarks on her own journey toward clarity. But sobriety won’t work until Cat commits to it for herself. Their relationship is tumultuous, as Cat falls off the wagon time and again. Along the way, Cat discovers that the cold man she grew up endlessly failing to please was not her real father, and with his death, her mother’s secret escapes. So she heads for Nantucket, where she meets her drunken dad and two half sisters—one boisterously welcoming and the other sulkily suspicious—and where she commits an unforgivable blunder. Years later, despairing of her persistent relapses, Jason has left Cat, taking their daughter with him. Finally, painfully, Cat gets clean. Green (Saving Grace, 2014, etc.) handles grim issues with a sure hand, balancing light romance with tense family drama. She unflinchingly documents Cat’s humiliations under the influence and then traces her commitment to sobriety. Simultaneously masking the motivations of those surrounding our heroine, Green sets up a surprising karmic lesson.
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends, like addiction, may endanger her future.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-04734-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
Weisberger writes with humor and authority, but her plot circles like a whirlpool—and by the time Andrea’s ready to face...
A junior assistantship to the editor of the world’s top fashion magazine (“The job a million girls would die for”) provides endless fodder for a one-note but on-the-money kiss-and-tell debut.
Andy, or, as her boss from hell calls her: “Ahn-dre-ah,” harbors dreams of writing for The New Yorker, but her luck runs out—or runs high, depending on your priorities—when her first job interview lands her at Runway magazine, beholden to Miranda Priestly, “solely responsible for anticipating her needs and accommodating them.” Intelligent, sarcastic and without a smidgen of interest in fashion, Andrea quickly learns the Runway culture, from the necessity of being tall, emaciated, slavish, and half-naked in winter to the perks of town cars, shopping bags filled with designer duds, and the promise of any job after one year of servitude. A few weeks of dealing with the insensitive, sadistic and imperious Miranda leave our heroine on the verge of abdicating, but before long she’s joining her colleagues in “the classic Runway Paranoid Turnaround . . . scrambling to negate whatever blasphemy is uttered” about the divine Miranda.” Outside of work, Andrea has a perfectly nice socially conscious boyfriend from her college days at Brown, a best-friend-slash-roommate with a drinking problem who’s getting her doctorate at Columbia, a loving family in Connecticut, and no time for any of them as she races to retrieve Miranda’s French bulldog puppy from the vet, hire a nanny for her children, make 12 trips in stiletto heels to Starbucks for her coffee in between sorting her dirty dry cleaning. It’s only a 14-hour day! Ultimately, of course, everything explodes, and in the end, of course, righteousness prevails.
Weisberger writes with humor and authority, but her plot circles like a whirlpool—and by the time Andrea’s ready to face some hard choices, it’s difficult to care. Her exhaustion is contagious. (N.B: Weisberger, this season’s buzz of the town, was an assistant to Vogue editrix Anna Wintour—read: Miranda Priestly—giving this putative roman-à-clef an added splash of juice.)Pub Date: April 22, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50926-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003
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