A moving collection of literary fiction.
A collection of short stories featuring a cast of everyday Midwesterners.
In this new set of stories from longtime novelist Troy, ordinary folks are often put into situations that demand their most extraordinary selves. In “Rent to Kill,” Millie Kick opens a small business renting plants and soon meets Max Luck, a high school English teacher whose cancer takes a turn for the worse not long after she moves in with him. Millie finds herself caring for and saying goodbye to the man she loves while protecting him from his successful and incredibly self-absorbed mother. This same mother, the inventor of a doll that has “growing” hair, reappears in the title story about a woman named Belinda as an old friend of the protagonist’s sister. After taking in a young woman who, in turn, takes over her home (and credit line), Belinda begins seeing ghosts who hasten to remind her that she hasn’t been generous enough in her life. The undercurrents of personal grief and long-standing, interpersonal family strife are present in several of the stories here, including “The Golden Flapjack,” in which several characters in a diner—including the aptly named “Barbara Something”—are struggling with the deaths of family members and aggravated by Imogene, the hostess, who steals from a donation jar honoring someone who died of leukemia. Troy’s stories are not the type to rip through intensely plotted narratives; they are slow-burns in which readers will find themselves moved by ostensibly mundane turns in life. The author displays her gift for finding small details that reveal volumes about her characters: “She used to wear a clothespin on her nose so it would grow straight…she used to hang on playground bars to make herself taller. She said she came from a family of knuckle crackers. She said Clair’s boyfriend wasn’t antisocial, not a survivalist or anything moronic like that.” These stories have the heft of real life, and readers will carry these characters with them.
A moving collection of literary fiction.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9798218483173
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Braddock Avenue Books
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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