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
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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