A riveting new story about an abiding atrocity.
Indelible characters bring to life the drama of bitter survival in colonial Virginia, indicting a society of enslavement and dehumanization.
In this epic tale of early America, abolition is still generations away. Half a dozen disparate characters, Black and white, converge into a center in which they will have profound and often shocking effects on each other’s lives. The novel begins in 1692: open season on Africans for kidnapping for wealth extraction and forced reproduction in the brutal Virginia Colony. As the narrator observes with typical bluntness: “All slaves were vulnerable, women more than men, children more than women, little girls more than all the rest.” One of those little girls is Bless, a great character in a constellation of well-crafted people who make do with the family they’re given and long for the people they’ve lost. Bless has the curdled privilege of being a rich girl’s plaything; later, the reader will learn about outdoor labor: “Field hands had to pluck the worms and grind them beneath their bare heels.” Perry’s descriptions are cinematic, and the dialect is evocative without being grating. She makes reverent nods to Toni Morrison’s Beloved and evokes the rooted magic of Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. The white men who buy humans and give orders are sometimes well established in the colonies—or like Jack Crewe, they are “the bartered class” of despised immigrants. They, too, have a price, and can’t afford to be sentimental. Perry’s intimacy with the period is palpable, and readers will gain greater knowledge of daily life under slavery, especially the monstrous glossary around the cold assessments of Black bodies. Some slavers flatter themselves: “Benjamin fancied himself a benevolent master, a caretaker to a rude and backward people.” Laws shift here and there, and we meet Black men who believe they are free. But white people, grasping to climb the next rung of the ladder, break their promises. By the end of the book, it’s an utter surprise what fate appears to unfold for the children of both striver Jack and survivor Bless, who has had to make the hardest decisions of all. Perry takes the long way home, following rich scenes with a slightly distanced narratorial explication that at first may seem redundant. Why show, then tell? It’s a congregation’s call and response. This history must be retold lash by lash, scar by scar, victory by victory, along with the reminder that systematic cruelty is codified, modeled, and taught.
A riveting new story about an abiding atrocity.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9781324105978
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
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
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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