A strong debut that uses gauzy impression to explore the harsh realities of post-communist Eastern Europe.
Abandoned as a child, Leah navigates a world of invisible outcasts.
Leah was born during the difficult post-communist transition period in Bulgaria. Her parents are unknown, and her earliest memories of the care home in which she is raised are of neglect, abuse, and her persistent desire to become invisible and thus escape the chaos of her surroundings. Repeatedly passed over for adoption, Leah eventually ages out of the system. She and Naya, her friend and lover, are turned out of the orphanage at 18 with no support system and few prospects other than homelessness or prostitution. Leah and Naya stick together and are able to afford a shared room where they become a family for each other in spite of the shared trauma of their past and the persecution they face as a same-sex couple. One day, however, Naya leaves without explanation and Leah is abandoned once again. She responds to this persistent feeling of invisibility—which reoccurs throughout the novel as both a symbol of protection and as the curse of a callous system all too ready to overlook what it does not want to see—by volunteering and then working with special needs children. In the course of this work she meets Dara, a child who has survived tremendous trauma, and finds in the girl a way to “patch up her childhood,” if only the authorities can see past their prejudice and declare her a mother. Leah’s story is told in episodic snatches of thought and memory which are interrupted by nine stand-alone stories of marginalized people—Salim, the Roma boy maimed by his mother to make him a better thief; Suki, a runaway from a coastal Bulgarian city trafficked into sex work in Amsterdam; Aksinia Levina, a former ballerina aging alone as the neighborhood cat lady, and more. While these interspersed narratives sometimes veer into the territory of trope, the novel as a whole succeeds in making visible both the dignity and the intimate familiarity of lives lived on the fringes of a society that would much rather pretend they do not exist.
A strong debut that uses gauzy impression to explore the harsh realities of post-communist Eastern Europe.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-948830-37-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Open Letter
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.
Scottoline’s latest links her great love of Italy with her long record of female-centered crime fiction.
Julia Pritzker has a presentiment that something terrible is around the corner, but she never imagines just how terrible: When her husband, Philadelphia attorney Mike Shallette, tries to protect her from a man who grabs her designer bag, he gets stabbed to death before her eyes. Julia’s grief becomes laced with guilt when she realizes that her daily horoscope had predicted a calamity she’s now convinced she could have prevented. The news from Italian attorney Massimiliano Lombardi that his late client has left her millions in cash and an estate worth nearly as much again doesn’t comfort her, but it does provide distraction—especially since she’s never heard of Emilia Rossi and has no idea why she’s been chosen as her heir. Since Julia, adopted at an early age by a couple who’ve been dead for years, wonders if Emilia might have been her biological grandmother, she travels to Chianti in hope of recovering some of Emilia’s DNA. Unfortunately, caretakers Anna Mattia Vesta and Piero Fano have burned all of Emilia’s clothing and personal items on her orders, so there’s nothing left to test. Growing convinced that the stars are directing her and that her history is rooted in Emilia’s decrepit house, Julia turns down repeated offers for the property and resolves to secure evidence confirming the relationship between Emilia and her. Now all she has to do is protect herself from the shadowy figures tracking and following her and recover from a series of vivid, hallucinatory nightmares that seem to be the cost of claiming her heritage.
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781538769997
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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