A meandering but often insightful novel about love and aging.
In Wilson’s novel, an American baby boomer seeks romantic fulfillment over the course of the 1970s.
As the author puts it, “Because Andrew Watson was a child in the Sixties he could not be a child of them.” Luckily for Andy, the 1970s were right around the corner. Following the tragic killings of student protestors at Kent State by the National Guard, Andy gets to participate in a campus-wide strike at his own Concordia College, a political rite of passage that has the side benefit of introducing him to the sexually liberated Susanna Agincourt, one of the few girls on the all-male school’s campus. Both the strike and their love affair come to an end, however, and five years later Andy finds himself not-quite-happily married to his high school sweetheart, Shelley, working as a newspaper reporter in Charlottesville, Virginia, and wondering just where the revolution went. After a brush with death—or at least castration—while snorkeling in Key West, Andy quits his job to attend grad school, waiting tables three nights a week and puzzling over his future. Into this time of uncertainty strolls Susanna Agincourt once again. Can Andy recapture a bit of that 1960s revolutionary spirit, or is he doomed to blow up his life with a thoroughly 1970s concoction of hedonism, cynicism, and malaise? Wilson effectively weaves the generational concerns of the baby boomers through Andy’s journey, which stretches all the way to John Lennon’s assassination in 1980. “The word revolution felt a little grandiose and a little silly by now,” Wilson writes, “but the beliefs it represented, if you were young and American and…lacked any significant form of oppression to rebel against in a world filled with the real thing, those beliefs, whatever they were, still mattered to people like Andy.” The plot is highly episodic, and some characters strain credulity—Susanna in particular never feels entirely real. Even so, Wilson manages to capture both the alienation and narcissism of the era.
A meandering but often insightful novel about love and aging.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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