Profound yet often quite funny, keenly observed, and deeply affecting.
A tragicomic exploration of the collateral damage of Alzheimer's disease.
"Everyone makes mistakes," says Edie Richter to her wilderness guide, hired for a short trip into the Australian Outback. "I guess it's just learning which ones you can live with," he replies. This conversation, which comes about two-thirds of the way into Handler's striking debut, encapsulates one aspect of the far-reaching existential crisis this loving daughter suffers in the wake of her father's early-onset Alzheimer's diagnosis. When it began, Edie was newly married and living in Boston; she and her husband, Oren, moved back to her hometown of San Francisco to assist with his care. Her mother and younger sister have sold the family auto-parts business, but they're still getting help from her father's longtime employee, Igor, "a gay Croatian who loved Neil Diamond and wore head to toe denim." Amusing details like this, rendered in sharply wrought sentences and brief paragraphs, keep this story of lost moorings light on its feet. "I didn't plan on ending my father's life," Edie explains, "if you can call it a life when a person has essentially become a thing." She also didn't plan on moving to Western Australia, but when her husband's oil-company employer offers a one-year transfer shortly after her father's death, she tells him to accept, thinking maybe she can find her bearings in the middle of nowhere. Ah, poor Edie. Handler gets it right from the title on out. Edie is definitely not alone. Her plight is one many readers will respond to deeply and perhaps even be soothed by. Along those lines, the depiction of Edie's relationship with her somewhat clueless husband, who wants so much to help, hits the perfect note.
Profound yet often quite funny, keenly observed, and deeply affecting.Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1951213176
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
An engaging story is marred by an overblown narrative style.
Three characters separated by geography and time are united by a single raindrop.
In her latest novel, Shafak presents readers with an ambitious, century-spanning saga that revolves around three distinct characters hailing from different parts of the world and different time periods. There’s Zaleekhah, a hydrologist who has fled her marriage to live in a houseboat on the Thames in 2018; Narin, a young girl who lives along the Tigris in Turkey in 2014, where she is gradually going deaf; and Arthur, a brilliant young boy born into extreme poverty in mid-19th-century London. Zaleekhah, Narin, and Arthur are united by a literary device that often feels overly precious: a single raindrop that, through a repeated cycle of condensation, falling, freezing, and/or thawing, reappears throughout time to interact with or afflict each character. Shafak’s attempts to personify the raindrop, which is described as “small and terrified…not dar[ing] to move,” fall flat. As a whole, the novel is engaging, with a propulsive narrative and an appealing storytelling voice, but Shafak is overly reliant on certain stylistic mannerisms, such as long lists of descriptions or actions that, stacked one upon the other, quickly grow tiresome, as in this description of Victorian England: “Spent grain from breweries, pulp from paper mills, offal from slaughterhouses, shavings from tanneries, effluent from distilleries…and discharge from flush toilets…all empty into the Thames….” Worse is Shafak’s tendency to overwrite and to pursue a self-consciously baroque narrative style (lots of betwixts and whilsts), which occasionally results in convoluted or overly intricate phrases. “Did not our readings of poetry leave unforgettable memories?” one character asks early on. Less, as it turns out, sometimes does count for more.
An engaging story is marred by an overblown narrative style.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593801710
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A story with both comedy and heartbreak sure to please Backman fans.
Eight people become unlikely friends during a hostage situation created by an inept bank robber.
In a town in Sweden, a desperate parent turns to bank robbery to help pay the rent. Unfortunately, the target turns out to be a cashless bank, which means that no robbery can take place. In an attempt to flee the police, the would-be perpetrator runs into a nearby apartment building and interrupts an open house, causing the would-be buyers to assume they're being held hostage. After the situation has ended with an absent bank robber and blood on the carpet, a father-and-son police pair work through maddening interviews with the witnesses: the ridiculous realtor; an older couple who renovates and sells apartments in an effort to stay busy; a bickering young couple expecting their first child; a well-off woman interested only in the view from the balcony of a significant bridge in her life; an elderly woman missing her husband as New Year’s Eve approaches; and, absurdly, an actor dressed as a rabbit hired to disrupt the showing and drive down the apartment price. Backman’s latest novel focuses on how a shared event can change the course of multiple people’s lives even in times of deep and ongoing anxiousness. The observer/narrator is winding and given to tangents and, in early moments, might distract a bit too much from the strongly drawn characters. But the story gains energy and sureness as it develops, resulting in moments of insight and connection between its numerous amiable characters.
A story with both comedy and heartbreak sure to please Backman fans.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6083-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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