Melvin deftly illustrates that family alliances may be as complicated as political ones.
Violence and chicanery, love and survival, poverty and careless opulence: Everything’s in play in Melvin’s sprawling family saga set in the Philippines—her U.S. debut.
Lali and Pilar—two daughters of a political dissident who, with his family, fled their homeland for California—have fundamentally different temperaments. Outgoing Lali seeks attention and experience, while the more reserved Pilar is devoted to her family’s honor and preserving its legacy. More importantly, Lali is in a relationship with Arturo, the godson of an authoritarian strongman, their father’s rival, who shares characteristics with former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. After the girls’ father is assassinated, Arturo whisks the family to Manila and the safety that will be afforded to them as part of his family. Lali (now married to Arturo), Pilar, and their mother return to a fraught political situation, and their private lives become enmeshed in a political web of shifting alliances and byzantine dealmaking. When Lali becomes pregnant, subtle shifts occur in the balance of power (emotional and sexual) between the sisters, and both young women embark on paths unimaginable to them earlier. Grounded in the turmoil of recent political, military, and economic life in the Philippines, Melvin’s characters grapple with moral dilemmas that grow increasingly complex as their story unfolds. Themes of poverty, exploitation of women, and inhumane wartime brutality underlie the narrative, which unfolds against a backdrop of scenic beauty and rural poverty. Melvin’s storyline mines recent (and not-so-recent) Philippine history and is delivered with a healthy dose of drama, conveying a milieu where superstition and folklore can be as controlling as the gaze of television cameras. Peppered with moments of cinematic violence, the account of a family in flux also challenges readers to determine how everything changed in the family’s dynamics. As the girls’ father once observed, life is determined by a series of subtle, perhaps imperceptible ruptures that can have enormous consequences.
Melvin deftly illustrates that family alliances may be as complicated as political ones.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-60945-773-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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