Engel's multinational update of dirty realism is full of ironic flair, imagination, and empathy.
In New York, Cuba, and Colombia, destiny comes in pairs.
Most of the 10 stories in Engel's fifth book, following the novel Infinite Country (2021), have a pair of characters at the center, the intersection of their lives sizzling like crossed wires. In the first, "Aida," chosen for The Best American Mystery Stories 2014, a 16-year-old girl faces the unfolding reality of her twin sister's disappearance. In "Fausto," an almost O. Henry–style ironic outcome crowns a story about a young woman whose boyfriend lures her into drug muling. Unexpectedly, the closest thing to a happy ending is found in "The Book of Saints," a wonderful tennis match of a story, bouncing back and forth between the points of view of a Home Depot manager from upstate New York and his mail-order Colombian bride. You wouldn't think a relationship that starts out with "To be honest, all the girls on the website looked really similar," and "It didn't bother me to sleep with him" is going to turn out to be a love story. "Campoamor" highlights Engel's dark sense of humor, focusing on a wannabe novelist in Havana with two girlfriends. This man is getting nowhere on his novel but as an "interesting exercise" writes practice suicide notes in his notebook. "Dear Lily, I remember when you saw me on the sidewalk and asked me to help bring your shopping bags to your apartment. Within minutes you were sucking me off as if you'd been waiting for me all your life. You make it hard to leave you." Engel's gift for dialogue makes the stories a pleasure to read despite their often grim situations—the stealing of a brother's bones from his grave, the impregnation of a nanny by the man she works for, the strange sort-of romance that unfolds between the survivors of a kidnapping and a rape.
Engel's multinational update of dirty realism is full of ironic flair, imagination, and empathy.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-982159-52-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This controlled, quietly moving portrait of a life in decline coasts to a halt in an unexpected place.
A man facing the empty-nest phase of a disappointing marriage drops his daughter at college and hits the road.
Published in the U.K. earlier this year, now shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Markovits’ 12th novel establishes the unstudied and confiding voice that carries it so compellingly forward in the first sentence: “When our son was twelve years old, my wife had an affair with a guy called Zach Zirsky, whom she knew from synagogue.” As the story unfolds, this voice often addresses the reader directly, saying things like, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound about it the way I probably sound,” and “I should probably say a word about our friendship,” and so forth, increasing the intimate effect. For the sake of his kids—there’s also a daughter, then 6—Tom Layward made a deal with himself that he’d stay in the marriage until they left home. The book opens at that point, 12 years later. “What we obviously had, even when things smoothed over, was a C-minus marriage, which makes it pretty hard to score much higher than a B overall on the rest of your life.” Other things are also going poorly: Tom, a law professor on leave from his university after counseling the owner of a basketball team accused of racism and sexism, has also refused to add his pronouns to his email signature. Markovits, who was born in Texas, played pro basketball in Germany, and now lives in London, develops this tricky aspect of the situation in a notably nuanced way, as part of the complexity of Tom’s character rather than as a dive into the breach of the culture wars. Tom is also suffering from undiagnosed but serious-seeming health symptoms, which he vaguely ascribes to long Covid. When an argument between his wife, Amy, and daughter, Miri, erupts on the day they are to take her to campus, Amy stays home in suburban New York. And without ever actually deciding to, Tom ends up on a cross-country road trip, visiting an old basketball teammate, an ex-lover, his brother, and ultimately his son on the West Coast. Though Markovits has never been big on plot, the reader’s sense that this is all leading up to something is not wrong.
This controlled, quietly moving portrait of a life in decline coasts to a halt in an unexpected place.Pub Date: Dec. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781668231562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Summit
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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