by Rebecca Rukeyser ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 7, 2022
This darkly compelling novel promises more interesting writing to come from Rukeyser.
Rukeyser’s debut is a strange, dreamlike coming-of-age story set in coastal Alaska.
Mira, the 18-year-old narrator, is, oddly, obsessed with the concept of “sleaze”: defining it and identifying it. She spends a summer working as a baker at Lavender Island Wilderness Lodge, a homestead that functions as a sort of bed-and-breakfast for international tourists. She passes time fantasizing about her aunt’s stepson, Ed, and observing the strange social dynamics that result from the eclectic coterie of personalities working at the homestead, which include a middle-aged married couple, two other teen girls, and a brooding addict. While she is obsessed with sleaze and with her imagined future with Ed, Mira is largely detached from her actual surroundings, participating mostly as an observer—until the drama among her colleagues becomes impossible to ignore. The detached perspective through which we experience this unfolding narrative adds to its rarified, dreamy quality. With a delicate touch, the story invites rumination on themes of obsession and fixation, the dichotomous beauty and eeriness of an isolated landscape, and the struggle of locating oneself within a new environment. It is a testament to the power and subtlety of Rukeyser’s writing that the novel’s violent climax, though preceded largely by a sense of quietude throughout, does not feel surprising or out of place; it is simply the result of the building social tensions and sense of desperation among the group and of a particular landscape whose compelling beauty—the author shows us—conceals dangerous potential. The obviously talented Rukeyser has crafted a vividly beautiful and odd world; the specificity of Lavender Island propels the story here as much as the characters and the plot, and that is thanks to her descriptive and imagistic prose.
This darkly compelling novel promises more interesting writing to come from Rukeyser.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54760-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
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by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
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New York Times Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
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SEEN & HEARD
by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
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New York Times Bestseller
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
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