by Mark Budman ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 30, 2021
An imaginative but ultimately disappointing set of tales.
Budman’s collection of short stories offers an occasionally surreal examination of immigration to America with an emphasis on Russian newcomers.
In his debut novel, My Life at First Try (2008), the author looked at life in the United States and Soviet Russia using flash-fiction narratives. His latest collection of 21 tales also observes the American dream through a varied cast of immigrant characters. The opening work, “A Perfect Rhyme Translated From Scratch,” is about a Chinese restaurant server living in a predominantly White hamlet in northern Pennsylvania. Her manager, a wannabe poet who’s separated from his wife, becomes infatuated with her despite the fact she pays him little attention. This is followed by “The Selfless Quarantine,” an eerie vision of a country brought to its knees by a deadly pandemic. In “American Zolushka,” a 20-something Russian woman is intent on applying to a mail-order bride agency, hoping to escape to a “clean and Technicolor” America. This Zolushka (or Cinderella) character reappears in “Five Minutes After Midnight,” now divorced, living in New York state, and involved with the Greek god Morpheus. Such bizarre couplings aren’t unusual in Budman’s writing; in “The Titan. An Office Romance,” for instance, a pre-Olympian god develops a crush on a girl working in the adjacent office cubicle, and in “Super Couple,” Soupmann—Superman’s third cousin, twice removed—falls for Saltwoman. Things get stranger still in the closing story, “Cinderella’s Sister or the Bridge to Nowhere,” in which an old man dies following dental bridgework and decides to phone his dentist from beyond the grave.
The author’s previous set of tales was sardonically amusing, and there’s a scattering of laugh-out-loud moments in this second book. For instance, at one point, a narrator wryly outlines Soupmann’s priorities as a superhero: “He fights for truth and justice, and sometimes for truth and the American way, and sometimes for justice and the American way, but not for all three at once. Otherwise, he’d be stretching too thin.” The author also produces some tremendously witty similes at times; regarding the elderly gentleman’s dentistry, the narrator remarks: “The old man’s mouth feels like the international space station: half of the teeth American and half Russian.” On other occasions, his writing is quite thought-provoking: “Everyone knows that reality is just a poor immigrant next to a dream of a newly minted native.” However, the tales include occasional moments of clipped, grammatically awkward phrasing: “Few minutes later, she was crying on his shoulder. He forgot when the last time a woman did that was.” Soviet-born Budman focuses mainly on the Russian immigrant experience, which he keenly observes. However, it’s disappointing that the stories here largely overlook immigrants of other nationalities. The nameless, underdeveloped Chinese server, for instance, merely becomes a blank canvas upon which her manager can project his skewed fantasies of exoticism: “He imagines her sitting in the lotus position…needles dotting her back.” The end product is, as a result, a somewhat culturally narrow study.
An imaginative but ultimately disappointing set of tales.Pub Date: July 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-60-489289-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
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New York Times Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
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SEEN & HEARD
by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
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The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
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