If truth is stranger than fiction, this makes a strong case that it’s also a better read. Stick with the news.
When you’re the Big Guy, life is good. Sharp wife, devoted daughter, friends in high places, and (obvs) lots of money, he inhabits his privilege and prestige with presumption and ease. But when Obama is elected president, his comfortable perch at the top of the pecking order suddenly feels more precarious than preordained. A nation’s progress is the Big Guy’s existential crisis—and call to action.
Set entirely during the weeks between Election Day 2008 and Inauguration Day 2009, Homes' new novel chronicles the Big Guy’s dual missions: to right the courses of both his country and his marriage. (One of these tasks will be easier than the other.) In the early morning hours of Nov. 5, 2008, stricken, enraged, and reeling from the “Hindenburg” election results, the Big Guy decides to put together an A-Team, a cabal of haves—“members of the good fortune club”—that convenes to shoot guns and go ballooning and plot a deep elite countermine to “reclaim our America.” While this happy plan is coming together, the Big Guy’s personal life is unraveling, and his tightly wound wife, Charlotte, is having a crisis of her own: “I forgot to have my life,” she tells him. “I’ve been having your life for a quarter of a century.” Set in relief to the jejune and tedious primary storyline, this complicated relationship is devastatingly articulated, far more nuanced and engaging. “Nine p.m. is prime time for bed, to be alone, to have themselves to themselves, to have finished the business of being a couple,” Homes writes, deftly explaining their early dinner habit and so much more. Alas, the blowhards in the how-we-got-here wannabe satire prequel keep bigfooting the B side: “Someone needs to grab this country by the balls and wake it the hell up,” the Big Guy tells his uninspired co-conspirators. Big words, but not nearly big enough to out-outrageous the footage, quotes, testimony, and exposés that have dominated American life since 2015. It must be noted: The reality of how we got here has already been extensively reported elsewhere to eye-popping effect and is far more shocking than anything here.
If truth is stranger than fiction, this makes a strong case that it’s also a better read. Stick with the news.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-73-522535-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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