A flawed tale but the author’s devoted fans will devour it.
In de los Santos’ (I’ll Be Your Blue Sky, 2018, etc.) new melodrama, a woman’s perfect domestic life unravels when her husband becomes embroiled in a scandal and a terrible secret she has been keeping since high school threatens her relationship with her teenage daughter and her closest friends.
On an idyllic evening in June 1997, Zinny is a deliriously happy, free-spirited high schooler partying at the local quarry with her tight gang—Kirsten, CJ, and Gray (“The fantastic four. The forever four”)—along with her beloved brother, Trevor. Twenty years later, bold and brave Zinny has become sedate, suburban Ginny shopping for pricey heirloom tomatoes in a gourmet market when she learns of her husband Harris’ firing from his VP job at a pharmaceutical company, ostensibly for offering insider information to hush up his unseemly obsession with an 18-year-old intern named Cressida. From those opening chapters, the novel toggles between the diary kept by Zinny, which recounts how she withdrew from her friends after she discovered who set the school fire that killed Gray’s firefighter father, and Ginny’s first-person narrative of her attempts to protect her daughter, Avery, from Harris’ disgrace. While there are touching moments, especially in regard to Gray’s coming out as gay and the cruel bullying he receives, the protagonists are so flatly drawn that it’s hard to feel much empathy for their dilemmas; for example, eventual love interest Daniel, whom Ginny meets in the dog park, is introduced as a “very tall, thin man.” Obvious plot contrivances, clunky, cringeworthy descriptions (Gray’s laugh is described as “a cross between a guitar strum and hot toast with butter and honey”), and writerly dialogue that no human would ever speak also diminish the pleasure.
A flawed tale but the author’s devoted fans will devour it.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-284451-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Platzer writes confidently about marriage and illness, but there's too much else going on.
A New York couple faces medical and personal difficulties during the national malaise of the Trump years.
When we meet Tess, a Broadway understudy and mother of two, she is celebrating her 37th birthday alone in a bar. Eight months ago, shortly after she confessed to cheating on him with a fellow actor, her husband, David, fell off a long ladder at an upstate New York apple-picking orchard, and his head injuries resulted in a debilitating, long-term vestibular disorder (also suffered by the author). Once filled with so much “buoyancy and good cheer” that he would dance upon getting up in the morning, now David feels leaden and can barely function. As he writes in a journal Tess reads without permission, "Some days I think I’m lucky to be with someone who’s suffered. Seen what she’s seen and survived true depression. Other days I think I need someone less damaged, someone who can devote herself more fully to helping me.” The journal also documents David's desperate visits to alternative practitioners that ultimately do nothing but ruin the family financially. There are many more complications—too many—some having to do with Tess’ past, other with David’s best friend, Tazio (whom David nursed back to health after liver failure and whom Tess is in love with), and Tazio's fiancee, Angelica. Tazio is an art student–turned-politico, and his story arc contains, among other things, a deep dive into the John Edwards campaign and a position in the Trump administration. As he makes the rounds of the male and female characters, Platzer (Bed-Stuy Is Burning, 2017) often seems to be searching for answers himself. For example, after Tess and Angelica attempt to resolve their past traumas by pairing up for #MeToo type confrontations, the author tries to evoke Tess' state of mind with a series of questions: “Maybe…seeing your father kill your mother is something you can’t ever get over. Maybe it is worse than rape, especially if you loved your rapist.” Elsewhere: “What if Tazio is planning on killing Trump?” Fewer storylines and less topical content might have helped.
Platzer writes confidently about marriage and illness, but there's too much else going on.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8077-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Readers craving some nod at redemption may have to be satisfied with rough justice.
A bleak drama of rural America that offers grim lessons but minimal hope.
In a small-town park, Izzy and Junie, two 12-year-old girls, meet a grisly end. Junie’s fading consciousness sheds no light on the murderer’s identity. This is Engel’s second adult novel (after The Roanoke Girls, 2017) to unfold in a meth-ridden, dying town. The setting is somewhere in Missouri, but this could be any American town, in any area left behind by the concentration of wealth and the exodus of youth. In towns like the aptly christened Barren Springs, many young people never make it out, and Junie’s single mother, Eve Taggert, is one of these. The deck is stacked against Eve and her brother, Cal, from birth—in a trailer in a remote “holler” to a drug-addicted mother who starves them, abuses them, but manages to instill in them fierce family loyalty and an implacable eye-for-an-eye mentality. Now in their 30s, Cal and Eve have succeeded up to a point: Each has a small apartment in town; Cal is a cop, and Eve works as a waitress. Thanks to Eve’s efforts, Junie had a modicum of a normal life and a best friend, Izzy, daughter of Zach and Jenny, who by Barren Springs standards are middle class. Through a fog of grief, Eve vows to find the killer and begins tracking the short list of suspects. These include her violent ex-boyfriend, Jimmy Ray, and his meth-cooking sidekick, strip club bartender Matt. An unforeshadowed revelation about Zach halfway through adds nothing to the suspense—instead, we are brought up short, wondering how a first-person narrator like Eve, blunt, plainspoken, and obsessed with the truth, could conceal this glaring fact from herself for half the book. In fact, her unerring instincts will lead to a completely unexpected conclusion. These pages are replete with lessons about the choices women have in such environments—that is to say, none, except to toughen up or give up.
Readers craving some nod at redemption may have to be satisfied with rough justice.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4595-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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