Amusing, disturbing, intoxicating tales of childhood terrors and obsessions.
Short stories from an Italian maestro finally translated into English.
The son of a domineering industrial designer and a children's book illustrator, Mari has been compared to Kafka and Borges for his unnerving yet humorous excavations of the psyche in which the pulpy influence of speculative fiction and pop art surfaces and glistens. In “Comic Strips,” an unnamed academic launches into a nostalgia-fueled frenzy upon learning of his impending fatherhood, and he rankles at the thought of what he assumes will be his unborn offspring’s lack of interest in his collection of comic books, ascribing to his future child “the adiaphorous passivity of the profaner.” Intergenerational conflict often serves as connective tissue between the loosely interlinked stories, as when one title from the professor’s shelves—the Italian SF magazine Urania—reappears in “The Covers of Urania,” a love letter to the fantastical monsters on each issue’s cover (“furry, slobbery, slimy, flaming, ungulate, bituminous, lobated, crested, gaseous, glutinous”), and we learn that the academic inherited the glossy comics from his grandfather. Originally published in Italian in the mid-1990s, Mari’s depictions of school violence will ring differently for American readers mired in an era of mass shootings. In “They Shot Me and I’m Dead,” the use of second person narration drives home a sickeningly familiar feeling: “a gloomy hatred for all your classmates would take hold of you; envisioning for them a thousand different deaths….” But the story spins into the surreal as the narrator imagines a bullet circumnavigating the planet, piercing even “the wood of trees, the brick and the cement of houses, the iron of beams, the ice of cliffs,” before seeking out its intended target. Freud would have a field day unpacking the many neuroses bundled up in Mari’s stories. Readers will, as well.
Amusing, disturbing, intoxicating tales of childhood terrors and obsessions.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781913505684
Page Count: 128
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
SEEN & HEARD
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