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LITTLE SCRATCH

A daring book whose innovations are balanced by the sad familiarity of its pain.

An ordinary day in an ordinary life rendered thought by thought.

The unnamed narrator of this debut novel is an Everywoman: She wakes up a little hungover; she hurries to be on time for a soul-crushing job; she scrolls through her Twitter feed with compulsive frequency; she loves but does not quite trust her boyfriend; she has recently been raped. At first the reality of this unsettlingly commonplace assault is cloaked in our narrator’s more long-standing anxieties, which take the form of intrusive thoughts literally intruding on the page from the right-hand margin. As a way of representing the cacophony of the character’s perceptions, British author Watson has created an unusual layout for her words, using not only the traditional left-hand justification but also right-hand justification and centered text as well as lots of negative space, different font sizes, and other typographical pyrotechnics. The physical form of the narrative reproduces the experience of the woman's scattered thoughts, sensory responses, invasive memories, fears, hopes, untrammeled bodily uprisings, text messages, and internet browsing history, which overlap, interrupt each other, merge, and battle in the saturated “now” of the book’s overwhelming immediacy. The result is an unusual reading experience which relates both the mundane (every drip of the narrator's morning shower, every step of her commute) and the revelatory (“When I write a diary…it was always there—the other—the performance of writing! I write thinking someone is looking in, translate my thoughts into something a little prettier, more heightened than my actual head…as if the diary isn’t even for me”). As the day wears on in a series of tea breaks and bathroom trips, the narrator’s efforts to mitigate the damage of her assault, her deep desire to return to a sense of normalcy, and her struggle to tell her boyfriend what it is that happened to her underscore the outrages of the everyday—a dissonant now that cannot be silenced or slowed.

A daring book whose innovations are balanced by the sad familiarity of its pain.

Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-385-54576-1

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020

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BY ANY OTHER NAME

A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.

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Who was Shakespeare?

Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.

A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.

Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024

ISBN: 9780593497210

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024

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THE GOD OF THE WOODS

"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.

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Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.

One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.

"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.

Pub Date: July 2, 2024

ISBN: 9780593418918

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024

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