A largely unsatisfying collection from a skilled writer.
Short stories that explore identity and difference.
Frumkin offers portraits of characters who don’t know how they fit in. The settings range from New York City to rural hinterlands, but they all feature a protagonist seeking to understand their own identity and struggling to find authentic connection in an often-inimical world. The title story is told from the perspective of a college dropout trying to figure out a way to survive in Chicago. The narrator’s life takes a turn when a woman who stars in and produces porn takes an interest in them and, eventually, invites them to join her household. What begins as a liberating experience leads to a psychotic break. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that the protagonist experiences a psychotic break while engaged in sex work. Mental illness and sex work are recurring themes. In “Fugato,” a psychiatrist loses his grip on reality. “Like and Subscribe” is the story of a cam girl. In all of these narratives, the author seems to be mistaking taboo—or ostensibly taboo—topics for actual substance. “On the Inside” is difficult to critique at the level of aesthetics. It’s told from the point of view of an autistic child named Benny and his mother. In an author’s note, Frumkin writes, “As a neurodivergent person, my goal in writing this story was to expose the harmful practices that impact the autistic community,” but adding that, in giving Benny a voice, he is not trying to speak for nonverbal autistic people. Given that autistic people have begun, in the last several years, to insist that they can speak for themselves, the author’s suggestion that his own neurodivergence gives him license may not persuade all readers. None of these stories reads as if it’s finished—“Fugato,” especially, ends on a note that feels like the author was just done writing. Frumkin has written two well-received novels—The Comedown (2018) and Confidence (2023)—but these stories aren’t up to their level.
A largely unsatisfying collection from a skilled writer.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9781982189761
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.
A love triangle among young literati has a long and complicated aftermath.
King’s narrator doesn’t reveal her name until the very last page, but Sam and Yash, the brainy stars of her 17th-century literature class, call her Jordan. Actually, at first they refer to her as Daisy, for Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby, but when they learn she came to their unnamed college on a golf scholarship, they change it to Jordan for Gatsby’s golfer friend. The boys are housesitting for a professor who’s spending a year at Oxford, living in a cozy, book-filled Victorian Jordan visits for the first time after watching The Deer Hunter at the student union on her first date with Sam. As their relationship proceeds, Jordan is practically living at the house herself, trying hard not to notice that she’s actually in love with Yash. A Baptist, Sam has an everything-but policy about sex that only increases the tension. The title of the book refers to a nickname for the king of hearts from an obscure card game the three of them play called Sir Hincomb Funnibuster, and both the game and variations on the moniker recur as the novel spins through and past Jordan’s senior year, then decades into the future. King is a genius at writing love stories—including Euphoria (2014), which won the Kirkus Prize—and her mostly sunny version of the campus novel is an enjoyable alternative to the current vogue for dark academia. Tragedies are on the way, though, as we know they must be, since nothing gold can stay and these darn fictional characters seem to make the same kinds of stupid mistakes that real people do. Tenderhearted readers will soak the pages of the last chapter with tears.
That college love affair you never got over? Come wallow in this gorgeous version of it.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780802165176
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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