A memorable batch of unnerving tales.
Migliore’s short story collection dishes out dread, violence, and gallows humor in equal measure.
In “Museum of the Dead,” a man inherits his mortician father’s funeral home. There isn’t much he can do with it, as a miracle drug has all but eliminated natural death; that is, until he meets someone who may be able to help him “drum up some business.” Other tales herein are equally somber: In “The MacGuffin,” a woman trails a dizzying string of text messages from an anonymous person claiming to have kidnapped her daughter. “Popular Genocide” unfolds at a therapeutic boarding school that feels more like a prison camp. Nevertheless, particular moments or even entire stories are funny, though the comedy is decidedly dark. “Fandomon” is an amusing play on Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon: Several characters involved in an incident at an anime convention relay their versions of something that happened in a hotel room. Each person’s bizarre account, despite similarities, is drastically different from the rest. Two of the best stories are the interlinked “The Running of the Dead Horse” and “Ancestry,” which bookend this collection. In the former, university professor Rita is shaken by her younger sister’s violent murder, especially as the recording of the event is readily available online. Her Italian grandfather, who helped raise the sisters, takes her on a journey to Rome to see family and later enact a bit of vengeance. The latter story finds Rita and a police captain looking into a shocking suicide and a mysterious organization tied to her late parents.
The author’s tales navigate through such bleak territories as homicide, nuclear strikes, and other assorted crimes. It’s hardly surprising that violence marks many of the stories, from bites and stabbings to meticulously detailed head shots. But Migliore deftly leavens the heaviness with satire: The dialogue-only “Suicide Hotline” features a crisis counselor whose prepared script implacably renders their responses mechanical and hollow. The author displays a knack for direct, concise sentences that stoke the narrative pace: “Trinice wiggled around. Her damp suit made the seat slippery. She couldn’t lean back because her arms were cuffed behind her. She was forced to press the side of her head up against the bulletproof glass divider.” While well-drawn characters (including Rita and her grandfather) pop up throughout this collection, the cast is largely aloof or hateful. They spew homophobic, xenophobic, and generally offensive slurs and sentiments that complement the savage acts they perpetrate. Readers won’t sympathize with most of them, particularly the nasty American soldier stationed in Japan who seems to detest everything and everyone (“The Tattoo”). Stories such as these aren’t prone to happy endings, but that doesn’t make the book predictable. “Anticks,” which follows a ventriloquist and his maybe-alive doll, alludes to the 1978 film Magic that seemingly inspired it; despite that grounding, the story spins off into an unexpected and deliriously entertaining direction.
A memorable batch of unnerving tales.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798890272515
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Dorrance
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2023
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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