A smart but rambling series of discussions on everything that’s wrong with the world today.
In this novel, an ordinary man gets invited to a series of conferences about saving the world.
As this “experience and research-based” book opens, a man named Henry keeps getting persistent emails from a mysterious organization fronted by Dr. Rout Logger telling him he’s been randomly selected to participate in an unusual series of meetings. These emails are offering Henry $5,000 per meeting to attend a string of group discussions about the survival and well-being of life on the planet. Henry attends the first of these meetings in Louisville, Kentucky, where he learns the leader of each session will be determined by spinning a copper rooster called “The Truther.” The organization behind these sessions is convinced that if humans don’t make “significant changes” in their “feeling, thinking, deciding, and behavior” patterns, the survival of Earth might be in jeopardy. The purpose of the gatherings is to increase human “Okness” in order to prevent this catastrophe. Stapleton kicks all of this off with a preface in which he mentions that “transactional analysis” movements like “I’m OK—You’re OK” and “Life Positions” will be central to his book. He, amazingly, also advises readers unfamiliar with such movements to look them up online. He then proceeds to lecture for 350+ pages. Only nominally is this work a novel; there are no distinct characters, no plot, and no dramatic arcs. Each “Okness” meeting kicks off with a spin of the rooster and then immediately settles into paragraph after paragraph of Stapleton himself, under the paper-thin veneer of his cast, examining “Spaceship Earth” and all the troubles besetting it, from unemployment and the erosion of the middle class to Trumpian politics and climate change. Many readers will find much of the speechifying sage and intriguing with plenty of rich, thought-provoking details. But those coming to this novel for a story will be disappointed.
A smart but rambling series of discussions on everything that’s wrong with the world today.Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-933594-01-2
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Effective Learning Publications
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
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
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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