Lock continues to experiment and push against narrative conventions.
Lock’s novel blends history and delirium in a thrilling, unnerving portrait of 19th-century America.
The books in Lock’s American Novels cycle—of which this is the seventh—have ranged from the wryly philosophical (A Fugitive in Walden Woods, 2017) to the metafictional (The Boy in His Winter, 2014). This book, which shares a few characters with Feast Day of the Cannibals (2019), both stands on its own and carves out a distinctive space—one part novel of ideas, one part madcap adventure. In an author’s note at the end, Lock calls this novel’s subject “America for the disenfranchised and powerless.” And so the story follows one Ellen Finch, who goes to work for Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1883. Ellen is pregnant when this new position begins, and halfway through the novel, she gives birth—at which point her newborn son vanishes. With the aid of P.T. Barnum, Ellen and her allies determine that the Ku Klux Klan is the responsible party, at which point the novel takes on a more stylized tone—one which echoes the occasional forays into fever-dream imagery in the book’s first half. While Lock’s focus is largely on 19th-century politics, there are a few moments that recall the current political scene—including one of a group of Klansmen shouting, “Build a wall! Build a wall to keep them out!” Lock juxtaposes critiques of racism and sexism with snappy dialogue: "In Mr. Barnum’s opinion, twelve clowns should be sufficient to fluster a Grand Cyclops and turn a meeting of the Ku Klux Klan...upside down” is perhaps the most ornate example.
Lock continues to experiment and push against narrative conventions.Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-942658-48-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.
A love triangle among young literati has a long and complicated aftermath.
King’s narrator doesn’t reveal her name until the very last page, but Sam and Yash, the brainy stars of her 17th-century literature class, call her Jordan. Actually, at first they refer to her as Daisy, for Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby, but when they learn she came to their unnamed college on a golf scholarship, they change it to Jordan for Gatsby’s golfer friend. The boys are housesitting for a professor who’s spending a year at Oxford, living in a cozy, book-filled Victorian Jordan visits for the first time after watching The Deer Hunter at the student union on her first date with Sam. As their relationship proceeds, Jordan is practically living at the house herself, trying hard not to notice that she’s actually in love with Yash. A Baptist, Sam has an everything-but policy about sex that only increases the tension. The title of the book refers to a nickname for the king of hearts from an obscure card game the three of them play called Sir Hincomb Funnibuster, and both the game and variations on the moniker recur as the novel spins through and past Jordan’s senior year, then decades into the future. King is a genius at writing love stories—including Euphoria (2014), which won the Kirkus Prize—and her mostly sunny version of the campus novel is an enjoyable alternative to the current vogue for dark academia. Tragedies are on the way, though, as we know they must be, since nothing gold can stay and these darn fictional characters seem to make the same kinds of stupid mistakes that real people do. Tenderhearted readers will soak the pages of the last chapter with tears.
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780802165176
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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