Whimsical and beguiling.
This love affair starts with a meet-cute at a museum, then slips the tiresome restraints of reality altogether.
“She was Elizabeth Bennet in a janitorial uniform and I, Fitzwilliam Darcy in oil on canvas”: This seemingly outlandish assertion summarizes the premise of Pager’s debut. We are being addressed by Jean Matisse, who lives with two of his siblings and his mom in a painting by his father, Henri. The “Elizabeth Bennet” in question is Claire, a new night-shift cleaning person at a private museum seemingly modeled on the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, where hundreds of paintings are hung edge to edge in a giant mansion. Ever since she was a little girl, Claire's had the feeling that there’s a way to cross over into the world of a painted image, and she’s about to find out she’s right. Later, after the pair has fallen in love: “We played cards with Cézanne’s farmhands, shot the breeze with Seurat’s models, and swam in the Mediterranean Sea.” As the subjects of the paintings skip from one canvas to the next to get some variety in their frozen lives, one of the most popular hangouts is “Le bonheur de vivre,” a Matisse which depicts a clothing-optional seaside bacchanal. This escapist adventure and beautiful love affair is deeply satisfying, almost therapeutic, for young Claire, who has a lot of responsibilities and complications in the real world. At one point, she starts to realize she could be missing important calls while she’s over there in La La Land. “Of course there’s no cell reception in—what year is it in this painting?” “1905 or 1906, I think.” In addition to the details of Claire’s backstory, Pager throws two big real-world developments into the mix—Covid-19 and a museum heist. But the real joy of this book is the world she has invented on the other side of the canvas, a kind of Phantom Tollbooth for grown-ups.
Whimsical and beguiling.Pub Date: July 1, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875384
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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