Languid, engaging, inwardly revealing flights of fancy.
A slim volume of mostly anthropomorphic short stories explores the underlying nature of relationships and family.
Though pitched as fables—and bestowed the dreamy quality of such by their substitution of animal for human characters—Robinson’s tales offer less a thou shalt or thou shalt not moral than a wistful, nonjudgmental imparting of experiences gained. The first and longest story in the collection, “Leave Her to Heaven,” breezes through the married life of a purebred Siamese cat and her tabby husband raising an adoptive litter born of the tabby’s one-off infidelity with a Burmese. The message by the tale’s end is not that either cat should have acted differently but rather that parenthood is unpredictable and should be embraced for whatever it brings. Next is “A Raven Named Rubin,” in which a field mouse tries unsuccessfully to nurse an injured raven back to health—at only four pages, the story delivers an aptly fleeting look of how dreams can be stillborn. “The Beginning of Wisdom” features the only human protagonist in the volume, a boy who collects insects in glass bottles. The boy eventually changes his ways—not after suffering a comeuppance but instead from talking with a squirrel and gaining a new, empathetic perspective on the sanctity of life. “Mayor Spare That Tree” is related in theme but relatively uninspiring (unlike the other tales, it gains little from using animal characters). Robinson’s prose is simple but redolent and at its best affords enchanting glimpses of underlying human frailties. “Bridge in the Afternoon” sees an egret spend many contented years playing cards and cultivating the perfect bridge partner only to realize how empty his heart is without a similar partner in life. “The Good the Bad and the Hideous” tells how a chicken and a praying mantis find happiness together. The volume concludes with “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” in which a mallard fails in pursuing her dreams of stardom but finds solace in returning to her sister and foster parents. All told, the author has fashioned an absorbing little collection. Each of the seven tales repays consideration and the stories work well as a series, probing gently and never overstaying their welcome.
Languid, engaging, inwardly revealing flights of fancy.Pub Date: May 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947860-19-3
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Brandylane Publishers, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.
A love triangle among young literati has a long and complicated aftermath.
King’s narrator doesn’t reveal her name until the very last page, but Sam and Yash, the brainy stars of her 17th-century literature class, call her Jordan. Actually, at first they refer to her as Daisy, for Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby, but when they learn she came to their unnamed college on a golf scholarship, they change it to Jordan for Gatsby’s golfer friend. The boys are housesitting for a professor who’s spending a year at Oxford, living in a cozy, book-filled Victorian Jordan visits for the first time after watching The Deer Hunter at the student union on her first date with Sam. As their relationship proceeds, Jordan is practically living at the house herself, trying hard not to notice that she’s actually in love with Yash. A Baptist, Sam has an everything-but policy about sex that only increases the tension. The title of the book refers to a nickname for the king of hearts from an obscure card game the three of them play called Sir Hincomb Funnibuster, and both the game and variations on the moniker recur as the novel spins through and past Jordan’s senior year, then decades into the future. King is a genius at writing love stories—including Euphoria (2014), which won the Kirkus Prize—and her mostly sunny version of the campus novel is an enjoyable alternative to the current vogue for dark academia. Tragedies are on the way, though, as we know they must be, since nothing gold can stay and these darn fictional characters seem to make the same kinds of stupid mistakes that real people do. Tenderhearted readers will soak the pages of the last chapter with tears.
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780802165176
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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