Full of desire but somewhat lacking in passion. Nevertheless, a provocative read.
A troubled woman, haunted by the abuses of her past, attempts to build a future that includes both punishment and forgiveness.
Helen is in her 30s, working as a low-level attorney in Boston; she often uses the office as a set for her side project running “a private social media account where [she] stream[s her] feet for women.” While the foot-fetishist camming site does occasionally lead to in-person meetups, at the novel’s opening Helen is in the market for a longer-term arrangement with Catherine and Katrina—or “the wives”—a married couple she met through an app dedicated to erotic role-play. Helen requests that the wives “mother [her] meanly,” and the symbiotic interplay they create among control, nurture, sexual pleasure, and pleasurable sexual pain fulfills the needs of all three partners. In many ways this seems like an ideal situation for Helen, whose online activities may be revealed to a decidedly un-kink-friendly IT department at work, but Helen’s past trauma reflects on every part of her present life, including her ability to envision the future. While Helen was in college, her parents were convicted and jailed in a horrific case of elder abuse that left her grandmother near death. Helen visits her grandmother in the nursing home regularly, but she’s also in contact with her father, who wants her to be a character witness to help him get parole. Torn between the desires to punish and please her father, Helen’s self-destructive tendencies threaten to destabilize every relationship she has built, including the one she has established with herself. Helen and the wives are compelling characters whose desires—even at their most macabre—stem from relatable places. However, while the book as a whole creates a moving portrait of Helen’s suffering and the potential for healing she finds in the “warm cruelty” of her chosen family, the overly technical depictions of the novel’s many sexual encounters strip away a sense of authentic passion. The result is a stilted distance in the very scenes where the prose should rise to a fever pitch, robbing them of their power.
Full of desire but somewhat lacking in passion. Nevertheless, a provocative read.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781646221974
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
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