A solemn, sometimes-sketchy family excavation.
Why did Laura Smith’s mother, Viola Umberto Wilkins, vanish from her 12-year-old daughter’s life? Thirty years later, in search of an explanation, Laura begins to uncover Viola’s complicated, tragic past.
It’s more about the journey than the arrival in Morris’ latest, a somber account of three generations of women, with a focus on abandonment. Laura has spent decades wondering about various explanations for her mother’s disappearance and dealing with the associated pain of unknowing. Now, at 42—the same age Viola was when she left—and for vague reasons, she sets about tracing her mother’s history, traveling to Brindisi, Italy, where the family lived till Laura was 6, when they moved to New Jersey. The Italian Viola had met Laura’s father, a U.S. serviceman, near Naples during World War II, and Laura believed that was where Viola’s roots were. But in Italy, she is able to locate a building called the Red House, the repeated subject of Viola’s paintings, and this discovery, plus conversations with an old man, Tommaso Bassano, reveal startling facts. Viola was Jewish—not Catholic, as Laura thought—and she, her parents, and brother Rudy were displaced from Turin and imprisoned with other Jews at the Red House in 1942, swept up in the violent antisemitic segregation of the era. Now the narrative switches—sometimes confusingly—between Viola’s and Laura’s perspectives. Viola catches the eye of young Italian soldier Tommaso, who loves her and tries to help the starving Jews. As the novel’s historical dimension intensifies, embracing Viola’s parents’ stories, too, its mood darkens and it becomes an ever-harsher consideration of survival. Laura’s pilgrimage to Italy helps her heal and understand her mother better, but other facets of the story remain unresolved. It’s a melancholy spiral of a narrative, at times slack and repetitive and with loose ends, but the unusual historical aspect lends gravitas.
A solemn, sometimes-sketchy family excavation.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780385544986
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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
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SEEN & HEARD
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