A powerful and memorable set of tales that fuse fantasy and reality into women’s struggles.
Bobe’s collection of sometimes-fantastical short stories features women in situations that highlight the perils and the beauty of existence.
In a Ray Bradbury–inspired framing story, “The Illustrated Woman: Part One,” a young woman visits a carnival with some friends, eventually wandering into the tent of a woman covered head-to-toe in tattoos. As the visitor gazes at different images, she sees different stories: “And they moved, and changed, and showed me. And I found that I could see.” Each of the tales features a female protagonist, and they collectively cover a wide range of themes. In the story “Through Water, Through Glass,” the unhappily engaged Rori yearns for a position at the elite Ocean Study Center in an unspecified city; during a tour of the place, she sees a narwhal. When she later briefly visits her unnamed hometown in the Arctic, the unusual sight of a different narwhal coincides with a near-death experience. In the tale “These Dark Deeds,” Eliza reminisces about the summer she was 13,when she and her younger brother, Josh, went to live with their older brother, Tim, after their parents’ deaths. After Josh goes missing, Eliza uncovers a secret cult that’s been operating in the town for generations. In perhaps the eeriest story, “Indelible,” a young nanny watches her two charges on an “art train” featuring traveling exhibits, but is continually haunted by memories of her sister’s suicide and a “hellish garden of tormented bodies and women who no longer were.”
Some stories rely more heavily than others on fantasy or supernatural elements, such as the demon Moloch in “Come the End, She will Be Light.” Although the tales offer a mix of happy and horrifying conclusions, many are simply open-ended. Bobe breathes life into each one of these miniature works, and each imaginary world she builds is distinctive, whether it’s a college campus or a parallel dimension full of beasts. The frame story is short and sweet, allowing the focus to remain on the winding journeys of the intriguing women in other works. Recurring themes of abuse, resilience, trauma, and choice effectively permeate the narratives; on occasion, though, the symbolism and messaging can be a tad heavy-handed (Rori internally muses that her engagement ring is “so damned heavy” while planning a wedding to a man she doesn’t love, for instance). One tale, “A Taste of Memory,” stands out as much shorter and more esoteric than the others, with an intense focus on the memories and feelings that various tastes and textures can evoke, and some readers may find its experiment to be unsuccessful. By and large, however, Bobe creates consistently absorbing fictional worlds, using smooth prose and dialogue that effectively transport audiences into each expertly crafted milieu. Genuinely funny moments—as when a character describes an influx of demons in a small town as “cosmic menstruation”—appear unexpectedly, as do heartbreaking ones. The author also conjures real moments of fear, which sometimes have a ghostly cast.
A powerful and memorable set of tales that fuse fantasy and reality into women’s struggles.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9798991379908
Page Count: 346
Publisher: The Hive Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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