Sprawling magical realistic stories with a moral bent.
Magical realism and myth meet dystopic themes in this debut collection of short fiction set in the Americas.
Set against a backdrop of political inequities, climate catastrophes, and other crises, Rubio’s stories offer alternative ways of squaring injustices (or getting revenge), beginning with “Brujería for Beginners,” a second-person, instructional story about learning “spiritual vigilantism or expedited karma.” “Calling it black magic,” the teacher insists, “is devoid of context,” especially when the context in question is domestic abuse. Similarly, in “Tunnels,” the Fogata family, fed up with the racism and violence in 1990s California, hatches up a plot to release pigeons emitting powerful electromagnetic pulses that bring the entire Southwest to a grinding halt. A magic mirror that transports the viewer to other versions of life allows the narrator of “Carlos Across Time and Space,” one of the collection’s standouts, to picture a different death for Carlos, who was senselessly murdered at a high school graduation party. Magical possibilities compete with reason and often win, especially for characters who are ill-served by what society serves up for them. In “Burial,” another fine story, a girl who is an outcast at school because she once tried to save a hummingbird is saved twice by tigers. Rubio is an extravagant storyteller; her prose thrums with life, and her plots take hairpin turns. All of this is on full display in “Maria, Maria,” a sweeping story that leaps backward and forward in time and from perspective to perspective as it traces the fates of three women all the way back to a mythic world. Except for a few of the more formally experimental stories (“Art Show” and “Paint by Numbers”) that fall flat, this is transporting work.
Sprawling magical realistic stories with a moral bent.Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-09054-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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