A tactile, magnetic collection.
Romm’s second story collection toys with passions and responsibilities, not necessarily in that order.
The book opens with the O. Henry Prize–winning “Marital Problems.” An unnamed narrator and her husband, Victor, search for a dead bird their daughter has entombed within Victor’s estranged late father’s binocular case, while Victor rages over the incompetence of their contractor and the narrator distracts herself with sexual fantasies (both about the contractor and about her friend, a single mom). This story is a knockout—its characters are brilliant, their relationships meticulously muddled by conflicting impulses and passing fancies—and yet it does not overshadow the nine that follow. The theme of motherhood is especially prominent, a throughline from Romm’s The Mother Garden (2007). In the title story, Brown University student Elisa sells her eggs to a famous actress to secure an economic cushion for herself. After graduation, she uses the money to begin building her dream life in New York City, but, when headlines and photos of the actress and her daughter begin to circulate, Elisa is beset by the feeling that she’s done something terribly wrong. “What To Expect” also involves donated gametes—39-year-old Emily uses a sperm donor to start a family solo and, once she’s pregnant, decides to sell the unused sperm to a woman who used the same donor for her first child. An unexpected connection leaves Emily unsure whether she’s just feeling the baby fluttering about or if there might be true-love butterflies in there, too. Though this book is deeply sincere (the title is indeed self-descriptive), there are wry, even cheeky moments to be found: “A Gun in the First Act,” named for a Chekhov quote, flips an interview for an academic position on its head when shots are fired at the annual AWP conference. And of course, it helps that Romm’s prose is consistently swoonworthy: “We stand silently, all the possible words drying up, wicked back into the heavens to rain on someone else.”
A tactile, magnetic collection.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781961897182
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Four Way
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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