De Kretser, one of our most deeply intelligent writers, offers a book that is wry and heartbreaking, playful and profound.
A reversible novel tells the stories of two Asian immigrants to Australia, one 40 years in the past and one in the future.
It’s the early 1980s, and 22-year-old Lili’s ambitions are grand: She wants to be a cross between Debbie Harry and Simone de Beauvoir. To that end, she leaves Australia—where she had moved with her parents as a teenager—and accepts a post teaching English in southern France. It’s the era of the Yorkshire Ripper, and Lili sees shadows everywhere she goes. But the real monsters are the larger forces that threaten her existence as a brown-skinned woman: racism and sexism. When Lili’s story concludes, at the end of her eye-opening time in Europe, de Kretser’s inventive book begins again: The novel can be flipped upside down and reversed to tell the story of Lyle, who lives in a future just a bit darker than our present. (To say that the book starts with Lili’s story, though, is an arbitrary matter of a reader’s personal sense of chronology. Since there are two covers and two sets of frontmatter, a reader could equally begin with Lyle and travel back in time to read Lili’s story.) Justifications for this format are clear in both novels: “When my family emigrated,” confesses Lili, “it felt as if we’d been stood on our heads.” Lyle, who believes that he must jettison his past in order to fit in with the “Australian values” of corporate drudgery and a whopping mortgage, echoes Lili’s sentiment: “Immigration breaks people. We try to reconstitute ourselves in our new countries, but pieces of us have disappeared.” Only Lyle’s elderly mother, who lives with the family, reminds him that there is another way to live.
De Kretser, one of our most deeply intelligent writers, offers a book that is wry and heartbreaking, playful and profound.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64622-109-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism.
Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love.
Bree is a friendly but standoffish bookstore owner who keeps everyone she knows at arm’s length, from guys she meets in bars to her friends. Mikki is a settled-in-her-routines divorced mother of two, happily a mom, gift-shop owner, and co-parent with her ex-husband, Perry. And Ashley is a young, very-much-in-love bakery owner specializing in muffins who devotes herself to giving back to the community through a nonprofit that helps community members develop skills and find jobs. When the women meet drooling over a boardwalk storefront that none of them can afford on her own, a plan is hatched to divide the space in three, and a friendship—and business partnership—is born. An impromptu celebration on the beach at sunset with champagne becomes a weekly touchpoint to their lives as they learn more about each other and themselves. Their friendship blossoms as they help each other, offering support, hard truths, and loving backup. Author Mallery has created a delightful story of friendship between three women that also offers a variety of love stories as they fall in love, make mistakes, and figure out how to be the best—albeit still flawed—versions of themselves. The men are similarly flawed and human. While the story comes down clearly on the side of all-encompassing love, Mallery has struck a careful balance: There is just enough sex to be spicy, just enough swearing to be naughty, and just enough heartbreak to avoid being cloying.
A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-778-38608-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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