A slim but fulfilling novel in stories about the madness of families.
A girl attempts to survive her chaotic Canadian family in Tocher’s literary novel.
Alice Montgomery, the only daughter in a household with four kids, is bookish and probably the best adjusted of the lot—not that that’s saying much. Her mom, Maddy, moved their family to Calgary after Alice’s dad, Jon, died of a heart attack. Her oldest brother, Jeffrey, is a star athlete who messes up that stardom (and a lot of other things) due to his unresolved issues regarding his deceased father. He goes so far as to start using his mother’s maiden name, Duval. The middle brother, Charlie, is Maddy’s favorite; she claims he has “the gift of faith.” Charlie ping-pongs between delinquency and religiosity throughout his childhood, though he’s consistently friendless and conniving. The youngest is Zack. The secret about Zack is that he was adopted. The other secret about Zack—unknown even to Maddy—is that Zack is the love child of Jon and his co-worker at the bank. The ever beleaguered Maddy is a former artist forced to work two separate secretarial jobs in order to provide for her kids. She is finally pulling herself out of the spiral she fell into following her husband’s death. Then there’s Aunt Bel, Maddy’s outspoken older sister, who took the family in when they first arrived in Calgary. Bel and Maddy’s relationship has always been tempestuous. “I suppose Mama wouldn’t be herself without Bel flying in and out of her life on a broomstick, breaking Mama’s spirit and giving her a chronic case of nervous hysteria,” narrates Alice. “Still, family is family. When the chips were down, blood flowed to blood.” Together, this fractious unit must confront problems old and new, from Maddy’s return to dating and painting to the circumstances of Jon’s death and Zack’s parentage. In times of crisis, there’s always family…though that may not always be a good thing.
Tocher’s prose, in the mouth of Alice, is spry and unsparing; here she describes Aunt Bel’s indelicate impression of Alice’s grandmother’s sleeping sickness: “ ‘She looked like this.’ Bel stiffened her body and twisted it into a hideous shape. The newspaper slid to the floor. She screwed her jaw to one side and raised her arms up into air with her hands clawed as if they were about to attack. By the time she came out of her pose, I had fled in terror.” The novel, short at under 120 pages, is told in episodic chapters that tend to revolve around a single character or incident. The order isn’t chronological, but a portrait slowly emerges of the family and its dynamic. Alice provides a stable, sympathetic center to the narrative. A shrewd observer of the people around her, her quest to understand her father’s behavior and absence becomes an unexpected driving force in the book. The book’s brevity works in its favor. Tocher manages to pack a lot into her pages.
A slim but fulfilling novel in stories about the madness of families.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A compelling take on the classic whodunit.
The shocking murder of a public figure at a high-end hotel has everyone guessing who the culprit might be.
Twenty-five-year-old Molly Gray, an eccentric young woman who's obsessed with cleaning but doesn't quite have the same ability to navigate social cues as those around her, loves working as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel. Raised by her old-fashioned grandmother, who loved nothing more than cleaning and watching Columbo reruns, Molly has an overly polite and straightforward manner that can make her seem odd and off-putting to her colleagues despite her being the hardest worker at the hotel. After her grandmother's death, Molly's rigid life begins to lose some of its long-held balance, and when the infamous Mr. Charles Black, a rich and powerful businessman suspected of various criminal enterprises, is found murdered in one of the rooms she cleans, her whole world gets turned upside down. Before Molly knows what's happening, her odd demeanor has the police convinced she's guilty of the crime, and certain people at the hotel are a little too pleased about it. With the help of a few new friends (and while fending off new foes), she must begin to untangle the mystery of who really killed Mr. Black to get herself off the hook once and for all. Though the unusual ending might frustrate some readers, this unique debut will keep them reading.
A compelling take on the classic whodunit.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-35615-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Gorgeous and alive.
A fable of being and belonging from the author of The Map of Salt and Stars (2018).
This is the story of two artists who are connected by secret histories. This is also the story of a trans man struggling to come out to the people closest to him and a woman who found new love even though her way of desiring seemed impossible in the time and place in which she was born. This is a story about immigrants. This is a ghost story, and the specters that haunt its pages are literal and figurative. And this is a story about birds. What binds all these disparate strands together are Joukhadar’s deep sympathy for his characters and his powerfully poetic voice. One-half of the novel is set in contemporary New York. The narrator is unnamed because the name he was given at birth no longer fits him. As he tries to express his true gender, he addresses his dead mother as if her absence makes his transition impossible. “There is so much of you—and, therefore, of myself—that I will never know,” he writes. Laila Z’s tale begins in 1920, in French-occupied Syria. After her family immigrates to America, she becomes an acclaimed illustrator of birds. The unnamed narrator knows her work because she was his ornithologist mother’s favorite artist, and, when he stumbles upon Laila’s diary, he finds the key to unlocking himself. Joukhadar is writing for a general American audience about people who are often categorized as “other.” Both narrators are Syrian American, as are most of the significant characters. Many of these characters are also queer. The author creates a world for his characters in which readers who are perhaps unfamiliar with the communities being represented can find their way around, but he does not feel compelled to translate and explain. And Joukhadar’s prose style—folkloric, lyrical, and emotionally intense—creates its own atmosphere.
Gorgeous and alive.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2149-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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