A rather flat offering from an exceptional author.
Kafka, King Arthur, and topiary hedges all play a part in this coming-of-age story from the author of Doxology (2019) and Private Novelist (2016).
Zink’s stories are filled with oddballs, and her latest novel is no exception. Bran is in fourth grade when her mother enters a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, leaving the girl in the care of her “common-law stepfather,” Doug, in Torrance, California. She’s been working at the plant nursery Doug’s family runs since she was a toddler, so life as an unpaid laborer is the only life she’s ever known, but being the only female in the house becomes increasingly uncomfortable after she hits adolescence—especially when the bikers come to party at the Henderson place. She makes her first friend when she’s in the sixth grade. Jay is rich and gay and an aspiring—and singularly untalented—flamenco dancer. At UCLA, Jay meets Peter, and both Jay and Bran are instantly smitten. Peter’s engagement to another woman does nothing to quell Bran’s desire for him, nor does it stop Peter from repeatedly declaring his love for Bran. A lot of things happen to Bran—she runs away from the Henderson farm after a particularly harrowing encounter with the bikers; at Peter’s insistence, she decides to try her hand at screenwriting; she gets a job as a barista—but her will-they, won’t-they relationship with Peter is the narrative’s central concern. The problem with this is that it’s difficult to understand why Bran and Jay are so obsessed with Peter. Early on, Bran declares, “Throughout this text, I will employ the token ‘[…]’ to indicate inability to quote, paraphrase, or reconstruct things Peter said,” and this is a blessing because Peter is long-winded, pedantic, and occasionally condescending. He vacillates between praising Bran’s beauty and brilliance and reminding her that she’s not quite as smart as him. Bran has a lot in common with Penny, the engaging protagonist of Nicotine (2016), but Zink's new heroine is subsumed by her tiresome crush.
A rather flat offering from an exceptional author.Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-53489-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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PERSPECTIVES
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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BOOK REVIEW
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