An engrossing, impeccably researched tale connecting passionate, creative women across time.
In this novel, two strong-willed women strive to build artistic, independent lives in different centuries.
High-powered Los Angeles–based auctioneer Emsley Wilson has a lot on her plate. She spends her days arranging political auctions for celebrity donors, and after-hours, she has a complicated personal life to manage. Her ex-boyfriend and business partner, Trey, dumped Emsley for a close friend of hers who also works for their auction house. But Emsley always makes time for her grandmother Violet, a legendary New York City artist, gallery owner, and socialite recovering from a stroke in a rehabilitation facility. When Violet sells her Greenwich Village brownstone, Emsley’s mother insists that she clean it out because “who knows what risqué pictures of Violet with her celebrity friends might be at the house.” Violet then presses an ancient diary into Emsley’s hands before she returns to the West Coast. On the plane, Emsley begins to read it and is instantly transported to 19th-century Amsterdam and the life of Johanna Bonger, van Gogh’s sister-in-law. Like Emsley, Johanna wants to chart her own path as an independent woman. But according to Johanna’s mother, “Women are like the canals, steady and calm, the supporters of life. Men are like barges traveling to the seaports, having adventures and collecting their treasures.” Emsley barely has time to read the diary before she has to confront Trey’s plot to dissolve their business, which transforms into a demand that she pay him $1 million within 30 days for his shares or walk away from everything she’s built. As Emsley struggles to save her business, she is drawn into Johanna’s family life and quest to establish van Gogh’s artistic legacy. Fans of Maggie Shipstead’s novel Great Circle will find much to love in Emsley’s and Johanna’s braided storylines, with romance, knowledgeable references to art history, and evocative descriptions of Amsterdam, New York, and Paris. Molnar’s witty dialogue advances the plot briskly; in one fun exchange, Johanna’s brother mocks Monet’s move to Giverny, France, and claims that the artist’s decision to paint waterlilies “will be the end of him in the profession.” But the cleverly drawn supporting characters would be more robust if they had additional opportunities for action and reflection instead of banter.
An engrossing, impeccably researched tale connecting passionate, creative women across time.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-940627-52-6
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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PERSPECTIVES
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