A rich, moving saga of people living on the edge, full of plangent defeats and unsung victories.
Residents of a homeless camp fight to head off eviction and shore up their fragile community in Borcyckowski’s luminous novel.
Phibius Emerson is a Black student who was recently expelled from college after he tried to burn his dorm-room furniture—now, he lives in a Sacramento homeless encampment. When he’s on his bipolar meds, he’s a smart, upstanding kid trying to bring some stability and aid to the camp by getting his friends legal assistance and drafting rules on trash and noise. His fellow campers include Lucy, a recently unemployed woman living in her car; William, a man on disability who edges toward a romance with Lucy; Mr. Maxstead, an uncannily nondescript man obsessed with military aircraft; Paul, a 60-something saxophonist who functions well on heroin; Mike and Linda, a couple who barely function at all on meth; Thomas, a Marine vet with PTSD; and Joseph Little Bear, an Indigenous orphan and itinerant street preacher. The campers survive on meager benefit payments, leftovers scrounged from restaurants, and panhandling. Sometimes, they don’t get by: Phibius has a breakdown and gets sent to the psych ward, Linda overdoses, and Mike gets arrested for possession. These disturbances attract the ire of local homeowners who claim the camp poses a danger to a nearby preschool. When the city tries to bulldoze the camp, Phibius fights back with the help of idealistic law student Lin Yang. Meanwhile, campers start drifting away: William and Lucy head north to Mendocino to pursue the dream of starting a marijuana farm, while Joseph wanders down to Bakersfield, walking the highways and hitching rides.
The author takes a deep dive into the lives of his characters, exploring everything from their legal status (Phibius bones up on the niceties of Martin v. City of Boise, a federal court decision that bans cities from evicting the homeless from camps if they are not provided indoor shelter) to their everyday challenges. The meandering narrative unfolds as a set of character studies; some get back on their feet after a bout of bad luck, others stay mired in addiction and mental illnesses, many feel a wariness about forging relationships with other people who may be either judgmental or damaged, and all glean simple pleasures from threadbare circumstances, like an unexpectedly delicious soup-kitchen dinner. Borcyckowski’s subtle, evocative prose delves into his characters’ psychological travails and skillfully orchestrates the tangible details of the camp and its denizens with a blighted lyricism. (“It seemed she was suffering, and her body jolted slightly against Mike’s shoulder as the spasms of tears swept through her; repeatedly, like an insistent wind that blows against you. It blows the papers away and the food wrappers around you away and the note you made about tomorrow; where you were going tomorrow, all of them gone. Forever.”) The result is a vivid and captivating yarn that reveals the offbeat humanity of this most marginalized group.
A rich, moving saga of people living on the edge, full of plangent defeats and unsung victories.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781962624978
Page Count: 357
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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