A whimsical, joyous portrait of the ends of things.
Seventeen-year-old Lenni Pettersson is terminally ill, a long-term, motherless patient rarely visited by her father. But in her final months, she gathers a new family of quirky characters who inhabit Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital.
As the days drift by on May Ward (the sad name for the hospital wing housing the medically hopeless cases), Lenni seeks something to fill her time. One day, she decides to visit the chapel even though she is not particularly spiritual and her religious training is haphazard at best—biblical parables have gotten tangled up with fairy tales and worries about homelessness. Yet there she meets Father Arthur, her first soul mate. Just months away from retirement, the priest finds in Lenni a witty, playful friend. She’s just as likely to good-naturedly mock his vestments as to ask him why she is dying. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the hospital, a young office temp is trying to use her art degree to snag a full-time job. Although her work backfires a bit when she loses her job to a proper teacher, the art therapy program she creates introduces Lenni to Margot. An 83-year-old woman awaiting her own death, Margot instantly clicks with Lenni. Recognizing that their ages add up to 100, Lenni and Margot embark on a massive project: 100 works of art to represent their entire century of life. Well, it’s mostly Margot’s art, because she’s a wonderful artist, and Lenni’s stories, because she’s a terrible artist. Threading together these two lives, Cronin not only embellishes Lenni’s brief sojourn with Margot’s dramatic adventures, but also nimbly avoids drifting into sentimental clichés. So as Lenni’s health declines, Margot’s stories chase her true love through a broken marriage, criminal escapades, unexpected liaisons, and even a lost chicken story.
A whimsical, joyous portrait of the ends of things.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-301750-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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
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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