An unforgettable and masterful work.
The acclaimed author of Breasts and Eggs (2020) and Heaven (2021) surprises again in this thoughtful book about women, loneliness, and relationships.
After seeing how miserable she looks in a reflection in a shop window, Fuyuko Irie, a freelance copy editor in her mid-30s, decides to enrich her solitary life. She begins by taking up drinking, which loosens her up and makes social interactions easier. Then she decides she should take a class at the local culture center, but after two attempts, she still doesn’t manage to register. Both times she goes to sign up for a class, she meets a man named Mitsutsuka in the lobby as a result of a mishap that brings them together. Mitsutsuka and Fuyuko begin meeting regularly at a cafe, where they talk about all sorts of things but mainly about “the mysteries of light.” While their relationship is important to Fuyuko’s development, the women in her life are even more important. Through Fuyuko and the women around her, Kawakami has created a rich and notable examination of the varied ways women choose to live their lives and the gains and losses that come with the choices they've made. Hijiri is the same age as Fuyuko but her total opposite. She’s sex positive, prizes her independence, and speaks her mind. Kyoko is the founder of her own business, more traditional, and critical of Hijiri’s lifestyle. Noriko is in a sexless marriage and loves being a mother, but both she and her husband are having affairs. Fuyuko’s indecisiveness, of course, results in discontentment. She says of herself, “I had faked it the whole way. In all those years of doing whatever I was told to do, I had convinced myself that I was doing something consequential, in order to make excuses for myself, as I was doing right now, and perpetually dismissed the fact that I’d done nothing with my life, glossing over it all.” Kawakami writes with the tender and incisive sensibilities of a poet. She never prescribes the right way to live, but Fuyuko becomes a happier person because of her relationships with others.
An unforgettable and masterful work.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-60945-699-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
The time-honored post-breakup trip—“Eat, Shop, Party”—has life-changing results you needn’t believe to enjoy.
The suicide of a friend creates a lifelong bond among three college classmates.
The latest from the author of Something Borrowed opens at the University of Virginia, where four freshmen are about to find the connection that will sustain them through the next four years. They are Lainey, an aspiring actor from California; Tyson, a Black man with law in his future; Summer, a star scholar and varsity athlete; and Hannah, whose conservative Southern mother is going to be very disappointed that she’d rather hang with these three than pledge a sorority. Shortly before their graduation, the unthinkable happens: For reasons no one will ever fully understand, Summer takes her own life. This leads to the eponymous pact: The trio of survivors agree never to take “drastic steps” before reaching out. They are in their early 30s when the first reach-out occurs: Hannah has walked in on her fiance screwing the local Instagram influencer in the bed she just bought for their future marital home. Lainey, now a Hollywood actor on her way up, drops everything and jets in from California to extricate Hannah and exact revenge. Tyson shows up, too, though he has to quit his job and ditch his girlfriend to get there. Once that mess is cleaned up, the three leave on a fantasy getaway on which each gets to pick a stop. The rest of the story unfolds mostly on Capri, always a desirable setting in fiction, where our protagonists hit places like “that beach club [from] TikTok,” La Fontelina. (Do Google it.) Though shocking life changes befall each member of the trio during their Italian sojourn, none are much of a surprise to the reader, who will likely notice the exact moment each plot twist became inevitable. Be quiet and drink your Aperol Spritz.
The time-honored post-breakup trip—“Eat, Shop, Party”—has life-changing results you needn’t believe to enjoy.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593600290
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.
An undergraduate at Brown University unearths the buried history of a Latine artist.
As in her bestselling debut, Olga Dies Dreaming (2022), Gonzalez shrewdly anatomizes racial and class hierarchies. Her bifurcated novel begins at a posh art-world party in 1985 as the title character, a Cuban American land and body artist, garners recognition that threatens the ego of her older, more famous husband, white minimalist sculptor Jack Martin. The story then shifts to Raquel Toro, whose working-class, Puerto Rican background makes her feel out of place among the “Art History Girls” who easily chat with professors and vacation in Europe. Nonetheless, in the spring of 1998, Raquel wins a prestigious summer fellowship at the Rhode Island School of Design, and her faculty adviser is enthusiastic about her thesis on Jack Martin, even if she’s not. Soon she’s enjoying the attentions of Nick Fitzsimmons, a well-connected, upper-crust senior. As Raquel’s story progresses, Anita’s first-person narrative acquires a supernatural twist following the night she falls from the window of their apartment —“jumped? or, could it be, pushed?”—but it’s grimly realistic in its exploration of her toxic relationship with Jack. (A dedication, “In memory of Ana,” flags the notorious case of sculptor Carl Andre, tried and acquitted for the murder of his wife, artist Ana Mendieta.) Raquel’s affair with Nick mirrors that unequal dynamic when she adapts her schedule and appearance to his whims, neglecting her friends and her family in Brooklyn. Gonzalez, herself a Brown graduate, brilliantly captures the daily slights endured by someone perceived as Other, from microaggressions (Raquel’s adviser refers to her as “Mexican”) to brutally racist behavior by the Art History Girls. While a vividly rendered supporting cast urges Raquel to be true to herself and her roots, her research on Martin leads to Anita’s art and the realization that she belongs to a tradition that’s been erased from mainstream art history.
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781250786210
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
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