A ruminative novel that's propelled by the narrator's psychological reflections.
A pandemic novel reunites an Icelandic man and a Japanese woman who had lost contact for a half-century after a brief but significant romance.
There is a lot going on in the mind of 75-year-old Kristófer, which is where most of this novel takes place. He has decided to close his successful restaurant, with Covid intensifying and no end to the lockdown in sight. He's lost his wife to an unspecified illness, and tension remains with his stepdaughter. A friend with whom he had been to school in London has just died. His brother both depends on him and nags him. And his doctor has ordered a brain scan, suspecting some cognitive issues. He tends to avoid what he would rather not confront and isn’t much for acknowledging his feelings, even to himself. As the first-person narrator, he is not the most reliable. Out of the blue he receives a Facebook message from Miko, the Japanese woman with whom he had fallen in love in London 50 years ago and who changed the course of his life before leaving him after a few months with no explanation or warning. Now she has the virus and is not sure she will survive it. In a novel that is a little too reliant on coincidence—that the death of Kristófer's friend from London and the reconnection with his girlfriend from London should happen concurrently—Kristófer decides without telling Miko that he will go see her in Japan, a journey that requires a stopover in London. It is there that he revisits his memories and recounts how he had forsaken his education, changed his life and his values during the radical late 1960s, and found his path forward after working at a restaurant with Miko that was owned by her father. They had identified with John and Yoko and explored the darker undercurrents of Hiroshima. Then she had left England, with her father, leaving no forwarding address. Why had she left? Why has she contacted him now? Will they have a future after 50 years apart?
A ruminative novel that's propelled by the narrator's psychological reflections.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-322698-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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