A dark, affecting tale of the desire to connect.
A lonely man develops a long-distance attachment to a stranger in this debut literary novel.
When he was 12 years old, Doug Faraday moved in with his aunt in Maryland after a traumatic family event left his father in prison and his mother unable to care for the tween. Doug never really got over what happened—he is still plagued by bad dreams at night—and he never adjusted to his new home, where his cousins kept him at a distance and the kids at school bullied him mercilessly. At 18, the bookish Doug comes across the LiveJournal of Courtney Bressler, a young woman his age living in Illinois. Doug becomes a voracious reader of Courtney’s blog—a combination of photographs, movie reviews, and irreverent updates on her life—and continues to follow her from afar for years. As he struggles with isolation, depression, and thoughts of suicide, Courtney’s social media accounts offer the lone consistent bright spot in Doug’s existence. Can Courtney (unbeknown to her) save Doug from his own bleakest instincts and help him come to terms with the tragedy that haunts his past? Or will Doug’s desires lead him to try to make their imagined relationship a real one? The novel covers the course of 15 years, during which Rouleau adeptly charts the maturation of older millennials, from anti–George W. Bush angst, Razer phones, and viral videos through to the present ennui. His prose is simple but closely calibrated to Doug’s discomfort, as here where the protagonist meets a woman for an awkward date: “Their orders arrived shortly afterwards. As the minutes crawled by, the conversation became more and more scarce, and Doug grew increasingly certain that once they were finished eating, they would say their perfunctory goodbyes, and that he would never see or hear from Leah again.” The book is not as creepy as the premise suggests. Rather, it gets at a very contemporary sort of loneliness—not only Doug’s hikikomori-like existence, but also Courtney’s one-sided affirmational exhibitionism. Many readers of a certain age will see themselves in these characters, blundering quietly through the years in search of the lives they might have had.
A dark, affecting tale of the desire to connect.Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 169
Publisher: Peter Rouleau
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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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