A frustrating, stylized tale of would-be prophets and evil forces.
In Montini’s debut literary novel, a religious man is pursued by a demonic bureaucrat.
Leo Pauline desperately wants to speak to God—so much so that he makes a recording of his own “quasi-musical recitation and experimental interpretation of the Prophet Jeremiah,” and he listens to it on his earbuds every morning while he walks his schnauzer, Percy. This behavior seems harmless enough (even if it drives his wife, Gloria, mad), but Leo has attracted someone’s attention—and not the someone he was hoping for. The Master of hell has heard Leo’s prayer, and he’s decided to dispatch one of his top minions, a so-called Mingler, to lead Leo astray. When the Mingler appears momentarily to Leo, the man mistakes him for an angel: “I’ve been visited by an angel and I don’t know what to do,” he tells his wife. “I’m destined to be a prophet that no-one understands.” Gloria only sees this development as further proof that Leo is losing it. She recommends medication, Bible study, and some time away from his Jeremiah recording. As the Mingler tries subtler ways to influence Leo, the spirit is surprised by how much he relates to the devout but uncertain man. The Mingler has his own theological doubts about a promised apocalyptic “Finality” and whether or not his master will ever actually bring it about. The Mingler’s orders from hell warn him not to get caught up in Leo’s sense of “lost-ness”; after an early misstep, he gets paired with another spirit, known as the Timekeeper, who seems intent on bringing about the Finality by any means. Can Leo resist the machinations of these hellions and finally learn what it is to be a good person? Will the Mingler discover that the Finality might be a bit too final after all?
The author’s prose is energetic and inventive, capturing the religious ennui that undergirds Leo’s emotional state. A can of tomato sauce made from no-longer-available tomatoes is enough to send him into a melancholic spiral: “Deep in his heart, Leo then felt a nagging foreboding that an era had ended in the world. And in his person. He sighed and staved off a growing sense of ‘lostness’. He then placed the container in the fridge, and took a seat on the couch.” The book has a slightly satirical tone—Hell has rooms with names like the “Earthly Realm Temporal Assignment Chamber (ERTAC)”—but it isn’t actually very funny, and it is unclear if it is even trying to be. Montini seems to take Leo’s religious crisis seriously, though it’s hard for the reader to do so given the cartoonish nature of everything involved. There is a plot involving Leo’s brother, Thomas, and a “Prayer Vigil for the Dire State of the World,” but it’s annoyingly difficult to follow the threads given how stingy the author is with establishing setting, character, or anything else that might help ground the reader in this reality. The result is more puzzling than it is entertaining, though perhaps that’s part of its theological agenda.
Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 153
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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