An idiosyncratic but ultimately unsuccessful work.
Yunghanns investigates concepts involving physics and human awareness in this philosophical epistolary novel.
A young American with the unlikely name of Derrida Eramus, fresh from his freshman year at an unnamed Ivy League school, is in London on a peculiar mission of philosophical development. His goal is to learn enough to earn a slot in professor Rousseau’s doctoral program in philosophy, which is based purely on the professor’s discretion. As Derrida contemplates the nature of existence, he reviews emails from the professor that feature minilectures on the atom and related subjects. He reads about the history of man’s understanding of the most basic particle while breakfasting at a cafe in Hyde Park. While doing so, he meets an elderly woman from an unnamed African country whose personal story is so intriguing that he asks if he may record it on his phone. Eventually Derrida composes his own account of the woman’s story, which he sends to another professor named Confucius: “She gave me her name as the letter Y. She was ninety-nine years old. At three years old, she had been given the title Sofos Anthropos, the village sage, or the Witan of Utopiae and personal advisor to the Supreme Leader, His Supreme Holy Highest.” Overall, the plot of this novel is thin, with characters that essentially serve as mouthpieces for various physics and philosophy concepts. The prose is rather dense despite Yunghanns’ attempts to dress it up in more conversational language: “My dear boy, consider entanglement as one of the events that occur at the subatomic level with which you are not familiar in everyday life in respect to physical entities.” The connection between atomic theory and Y’s more political account of “Africa’s Utopiae” aren’t immediately made clear to readers, although they share an odd, antiquated framing—particularly the latter, which comes across as thorough exoticization. The author’s goal appears to have been to make complex ideas more palatable through fiction, but she doesn’t adequately develop the story’s characters, plot, or emotion to achieve it.
An idiosyncratic but ultimately unsuccessful work.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing Group
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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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