Brilliantly weird. Weirdly brilliant.
Three giants on an interstellar spacecraft are rapidly running out of room—and they just keep growing.
As unconventional as the premise of New Zealander Adam’s novel seems, the reality is far stranger. Three giants—Stanley, Alba, and Drew—are seemingly all that remain of the spacecraft Audition’s original crew of 18. They can’t be sure of this, however, as they are totally immobile, crammed into whatever spaces they could find large enough to accommodate them when, already enormous compared to “normal-sized humans” at the outset of the voyage, they grew at an exponential rate, with catastrophic results. These giant crew members, “dangerous and annoying” on Earth, were trained to operate the ship in the classroom—an open-air stadium where they were subjected to a barrage of mind control techniques that have made them docile and stripped them of any memory of their prior lives. The spacecraft Audition operates through the mysterious, almost alchemical, process of turning “[their] noise into speed and steering.” Though the goal of their mission is uncertain, Stanley, Alba, and Drew have been trained to keep up a constant stream of inane conversation to make sure the ship’s functions continue to operate, including the artificial gravity that “keeps humans small.” Why did the crew enact an apparently total “silent rebellion” against Audition itself, the consequences of which are what have Stanley, Alba, and Drew crammed up against the rafters? The novel’s three simultaneous narrators don’t know—their agency almost totally stripped from them by their physical suffering, lingering amnesia, and the need to keep up a constant stream of mind-wiping chatter—but a careful reader can begin to put together the story behind this story as snatches of the lives the giants lived “before the classroom” begin to come into focus. Stunningly inventive, this book is told in three parts that explore the simultaneity of past, present, and future as the three main characters’ voices loop and swell around each other. Though readers may find themselves challenged by this form—akin to Virginia Woolf’s The Waves meeting a 21st century version of Philip K. Dick—the rewards of a sustained read are abundant.
Brilliantly weird. Weirdly brilliant.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781566897310
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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