Eclectic tales take readers through jolts, inspired moments, and endless awe.
Bobe’s motley collection of short stories delivers drama, weird creatures, and horrors.
In the opening story, “Fins,” a woman gradually develops gills and a tail every time she’s in water. She’s becoming something else, but a full transformation could mean leaving behind the life she knows. This is just one of a handful of genres that Bobe expertly tackles. The heartfelt “All of His Loved Ones” stars a funeral director struggling to accommodate a family that wants a beloved elephant at their uncle’s outdoor service. The disconcerting “Husband” follows Delila Ryan, whose husband, Henry, insists he’s named Scott Ryan and that she’s confusing details of their marriage. The theme of family ties the diverse tales together, from a cabal of witches with secrets in their past to the fractured unity of a father, sons, and daughter whose matriarch has left them. The author excels at driving readers toward unexpected turns. “The Tuesday Murders,” for example, is a potent take on the familiar Groundhog Day scenario in which a woman takes drastic measures against a potential stalker, her apathetic boss, and her harassing co-workers. Other stories’ unpredictability fuels an obscure but ominous horror. In the standout “The Hum,” Maria starts working at a small-town library. As if locals’ discussions of an incessant “hum” Maria can’t hear isn’t unnerving enough, there’s also the previous employee who has mysteriously disappeared. It all culminates in a doozy of an ending. Bobe’s vibrant metaphors (“Her voice is a twist of green tendrils, bright like poison, alluring like spindles or a locked box. This house, with its clocks out of sync and no screens on the windows, might as well be a flowering vine”) only strengthen this inventive, creepy collection.
Eclectic tales take readers through jolts, inspired moments, and endless awe.Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-72-937577-6
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving, hilarious reminder that parenthood, just like life, means constant change.
During an annual beach vacation, a mother confronts her past and learns to move forward.
Her family’s annual trip to Cape Cod is always the highlight of Rocky’s year—even more so now that her children are grown and she cherishes what little time she gets with them. Rocky is deep in the throes of menopause, picking fights with her loving husband and occasionally throwing off her clothes during a hot flash, much to the chagrin of her family. She’s also dealing with her parents, who are crammed into the same small summer house (with one toilet that only occasionally spews sewage everywhere) and who are aging at an alarmingly rapid rate. Rocky’s life is full of change, from her body to her identity—she frequently flashes back to the vacations of years past, when her children were tiny. Although she’s grateful for the family she has, she mourns what she’s lost. Newman (author of the equally wonderful We All Want Impossible Things, 2022) imbues Rocky’s internal struggles with importance and gravity, all while showcasing her very funny observations about life and parenting. She examines motherhood with a raw honesty that few others manage—she remembers the hard parts, the depths of despair, panic, and anxiety that can happen with young children, and she also recounts the joy in a way that never feels saccharine. She has a gift for exploring the real, messy contradictions in human emotions. As Rocky puts it, “This may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other, I know how you feel.”
A moving, hilarious reminder that parenthood, just like life, means constant change.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780063345164
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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