Intriguing, poignant, and well-written, but sexually overloaded.
A work of autofiction that revisits Zimmerman’s complicated, doomed-from-the-beginning first marriage.
Mel, the author’s stand-in protagonist, is 22 years old when readers meet him in 1961 on his way from San Francisco to visit his friend Jack in the latter’s Berkeley apartment. An aspiring writer, Mel has just secured his creative writing bachelor’s degree. Without a summer job and nursing the pain of several short-lived relationships, he is once again looking for love. Marlena enters his life; a striking sexual adventurer of Italian heritage, she is six years older than Mel. He is immediately smitten, but Marlena is the girlfriend of another resident in Jack’s building, and she is more attracted to women than to men, anyway. For a time, Mel tries to keep his distance, but the intensity of their mutual attraction is not to be denied. So begins a lengthy, tumultuous, angst-filled love affair that displays elements of a physical and emotional sadomasochistic relationship, with Marlena in control. Mel struggles with his attempts at playwriting while studying for his graduate degree. He accepts an out-of-state university’s offer to be a creative writing instructor, which leads to the couple’s continual separations, during which Marlena takes up with a variety of female lovers. Still, they marry, and as the narrative meanders through the social and musical signifiers of the late 1960s, it takes readers through the couple’s five troubled years of matrimony. Zimmerman lays out the defining parameters of their relationship early in the saga: During one of their breakups, in a moment of painful clarity, Mel tells Marlena, “The truth is, you’re my enemy. You get inside me and destroy me from within. And the worst of it is, I let you do it.” In lengthy passages, Zimmerman dwells on the details of their sexual relationship, which he describes repeatedly and graphically. Occasional copy-editing oversights notwithstanding, his prose is steady and engaging, skillfully communicating Mel’s emotion-laden obsession with Marlena and her wanderings while maintaining a narrator’s distance. Though Mel finally leaves his nemesis/inamorata behind, this erotic tale is exhausting for protagonist and reader alike.
Intriguing, poignant, and well-written, but sexually overloaded.Pub Date: May 26, 2024
ISBN: 9798330345175
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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