bookshelf

DUSK AND EMBER

Name: DUSK AND EMBER
Author: Robert Jacoby

by Robert Jacoby ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 2019

A vast, cerebral account of an unstable teenager’s attempt to find redemption.

bookshelf

Jacoby’s (There Are Reasons Noah Packed No Clothes, 2012, etc.) literary prequel tells the story of young man’s journey to a friend’s wake, set over the course of an eventful evening.

It’s December 1981, and Richard Issych has been having a hard time. The 19-year-old lives with his overbearing parents and works the third shift at the Sekula Tool and Die foundry in Eastlake, Ohio; he takes five or six quaaludes per day. Maybe it’s the drugs, or maybe there’s a deeper cause—he has a history of suicide attempts—but Richard’s thoughts are often jumbled in a way that makes it difficult for him make decisions, or even keep track of what’s going on. When he arrives at work one night and learns that one of his co-workers, Dale Smith, has murdered fellow co-worker Melvin Skinner, whatever grip he had on reality gets that much looser—because Richard had picked up Dale and driven him to Melvin’s house, and along the way, Dale said that he intended to commit murder. Richard decides to attend Melvin’s wake, catching a ride with other co-workers Jeff, JoJo, and Dannyboy. The trip to the wake becomes a quixotic adventure across the rusty Cleveland metropolitan area, through Richard’s memories and into the depths of his own psyche. Throughout this novel, Jacoby’s prose, which closely follows Richard’s internal monologue, is dense and dynamic—often swerving off in unexpected directions before doubling back on itself: “He was a confusion of thoughts; he broke his brain in bits on needle thoughts, needless thoughts. He had to calm down, calm himself down, think, he told himself—think what you’re trying to think.” This makes for moments of wonderful lyricism, but it also slows the pace to a crawl at times—and, given the novel’s length of more than 450 pages, readers may find this somewhat discouraging. The book is conceptually impressive, however, and fans of epic postmodernist novels may find themselves enthralled by it.

A vast, cerebral account of an unstable teenager’s attempt to find redemption.

Pub Date: May 15, 2019

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 371

Publisher: Cloud Books

Review Posted Online: March 7, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

bookshelf

THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

bookshelf

Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

- AWARDS
Mantel, Woodson on Women’s Prize Longlist

- SEEN & HEARD
Reese’s Book Club Reveals April Pick

bookshelf

THEN SHE WAS GONE

by Lisa Jewell ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 24, 2018

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.

bookshelf

Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.

Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.

Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.