Ryan highlights the quirks of ordinary life in a place known for the extraordinary in this sharp and funny collection.
In the shadow of the space program, everyday residents of Cape Canaveral and its environs cope with varying levels of domestic strife in these nine stories, set over the past 50 years.
Ryan (Gemini Bites, 2011, etc.) has a knack for squeezing drama out of seemingly mundane situations. In the title story, a nerdy gay teenager develops a crush on a self-aggrandizing ex-astronaut but gets more than he bargained for when the man and his wife invite him to dinner. A pregnant high schooler dreams of becoming a pageant queen in “Miss America” only to find herself in the home of a talent scout whose actions don’t exactly inspire confidence. For the most part, these stories, while all rooted in the everyday, work best when Ryan amps up the volume a decibel or two. The weaker links—one about a foster teen meeting a new sibling, another a somewhat too-familiar take on childhood bullying—lack the (slightly) out-of-the-ordinary circumstances that give the others their charges. As the book progresses, the protagonists get older, too, and though all of Ryan’s characters are endearing, they do get better—and saltier—with age. In the funny and affecting “Fountain of Youth,” a former “bookkeeper for an extortion racket” finds himself in witness protection at “the finest retirement community in all of Brevard County.” Set in the wake of the Challenger explosion, “Go Fever” is about a NASA engineer’s affair with the wife of his boss, who is obsessed with the idea that she’s trying to poison him. And in Ryan’s strongest piece, “Earth, Mostly,” a thrice-divorced grandmother attempts an afternoon tryst with her (married) defensive driving instructor.
Ryan highlights the quirks of ordinary life in a place known for the extraordinary in this sharp and funny collection.Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-34138-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dial Press
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
This is a big character-driven epic, though it’s overinflated in its pronouncements about its setting.
A group of young men and women aggressively affected by the post–9/11 world reconverge in their Ohio hometown.
Markley’s (Tales of Iceland, 2013, etc.) flagrantly symphonic debut novel is effectively four linked novellas, with each section circling around a high school friend or acquaintance of Rick, who was killed in action in Iraq. Each person has hit on hard times in their 20s, and on one evening in their hometown of New Canaan, they’re laboring to set things right. Bill has an omnivorous drug habit and is hauling a plainly illicit but unidentified (until the climax) package north from New Orleans; Stacey wants to confront the homophobic mother of her high school girlfriend; Dan is an Afghanistan war vet who wants to catch up with an old flame; and Tina has a score to settle with the jock who sexually abused her in high school. Markley is a knockout storyteller, infusing each section with realistic detail, from the drudgery of Walmart work to war to the fleeting ecstasies of drugs to violence, especially self-harm. (Tina’s section is especially tough reading on that last front.) High school, Markley writes, provided “stories of dread and wonder you could wrap whole novels around,” and he’s followed through. There's an unsettling feeling, though, that while he’s mastered complex characterization, it’s often in service of simplistic broader portraiture about the Rust Belt. New Canaan, “sclerotic in every capacity,” is doom-and-gloom to the edge of caricature: Its economy is rotted and shored up on meth and disability checks, its community reduced to pro-Trump resentment and anti-Muslim anger. The culture Markley describes unquestionably exists, and strong novels about America’s underclass are lamentably thin on the ground. But this novel is best appreciated as a set of portraits rather than (as the title suggests) a definitive statement about an entire state.
This is a big character-driven epic, though it’s overinflated in its pronouncements about its setting.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7447-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
This honest, mature look at life and love adds to a growing body of evidence leading to a decisive verdict: Ciment is an...
Two sequestered jurors on a tabloidworthy Florida murder trial tumble into an impassioned, illicit affair in this engaging, empathetic novel.
In a jury holding room, waiting to be called into the courtroom for a voir dire, two prospective jurors, identified for most of the book only as C-2 and F-17, begin a flirtation that rapidly grows into a full-blown love affair. C-2 is a 52-year-old female photographer of some renown. Having shot portraits for magazines like Rolling Stone and Interview early in her career, she eventually concluded she was interested in people not as individuals but as a species, and she turned her lens to other subjects, such as war and animals. C-2 is married to a much older man, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who is now 85. Their once-ardent relationship has evolved, and she is increasingly aware of the toll time is taking on their lives and bodies. Now, intensely attracted to F-17, a professor of anatomy in his early 40s with a pitted complexion, piercing blue eyes, and “beautiful feet,” C-2 finds herself hoping for “one last dalliance before she gets too old.” As the affair plays out against a backdrop of a gruesome, sad, and unsettling murder trial (a teenage girl stands accused of killing her toddler brother, but is the real culprit her twin sister?) and the shabby Econo Lodge accommodations and unappetizing luncheonette meals the court has arranged for the jurors during their sequestration, C-2, as both a lover and a juror, must weigh issues of guilt and innocence, loyalty and betrayal, life and death, passion and compassion. Ciment (Act of God, 2015, etc.) lays out the plot—part love story, part whodunit, part coming-of-old-age tale—with gentle sensitivity and straightforward intelligence, approaching complex emotions and conflicting loyalties as might a good juror: observing her characters’ behavior with an open mind and heart, an ability to consider context and varied perspectives, an appreciation for the evidence, and a notable lack of judgment.
This honest, mature look at life and love adds to a growing body of evidence leading to a decisive verdict: Ciment is an author well worth reading.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4798-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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