By the time the novel belatedly reaches the big reveal, the reader has passed the point of caring.
Two men walk into a pub, and they drink and talk until they can’t do either for much longer.
Much of Irish novelist Doyle's latest is made up of dialogue, unattributed, as recounted by a man in his late middle age named Davy. He's joined by Joe, a drinking buddy from his Dublin youth, though decades and geography have left some distance between them. Davy and his wife have long lived in England. He returns (alone) to visit his widowed father in Dublin, where Joe still lives. Neither of them drinks much anymore, but now that they're reunited, they decide to do it up like old times. As their talk gets more drunken, sloppier and circular, those old times are very much on Joe’s mind, because he recently left his wife for Jessica, a woman he had first met in those long-ago pubs with Davy and hadn’t seen for almost four decades. So they talk of who they were and who they are, their marriages and their families, since neither knows the other’s much at all. In some ways, they no longer know each other well. Yet they know each other better than anyone else does, as the much younger men they once were. And perhaps still are? As Joe confesses and Davy badgers him, Davy also shares with the reader at least some of what’s on his mind: his own marriage and something he doesn't want to share with Joe. He keeps checking his phone for a call that doesn’t come. They keep ordering another round, pints that neither of them really wants. “The drink is funny, though, isn’t it?” says Joe. “You see things clearly but then you can’t get at the words to express them properly.” Whatever clarity they are finding isn't all that clear to the reader, who is beginning to find their company as exhausting and interminable as they do. It seems that Davy is hiding something, burying something, doing his best to escape something from which there is perhaps no escape. Eventually, they have to leave.
By the time the novel belatedly reaches the big reveal, the reader has passed the point of caring.Pub Date: June 23, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-8045-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Walter is a beacon of wit, decency, and style.
A hermit comes out of the woods to save his family—and see if life in the world is worth living again.
The wild energy of Walter’s latest book is encapsulated in an exchange between former journalist Rhys Kinnick and a manic ex-cop name Chuck he’s connected with when his grandchildren are kidnapped out of his care: “Dude! Let’s do this!” Young Leah and Asher were delivered to Rhys’ ramshackle pile in the woods north of Spokane by a neighbor per the instructions of their mother, who needed a little break from her life. The thing is, Rhys hasn’t seen the kids in so long he doesn’t recognize them at first. He’s been living off the grid and out of touch ever since he punched his son-in-law in the face at Thanksgiving dinner in 2016. When the kids are almost immediately nabbed by goons connected with said son-in-law, Rhys gets help from a variety of partners: Lucy, an old flame from the newspaper; Chuck, who’s her old flame; and a Native American friend named Brian. Two out of three of these are packing heat, and several showdowns ensue, plus a high-spirited visit to a drug-positive electronica festival in the Canadian woods. The characters are created with loving care, the plot with reckless glee; Walter seems as fed up with various aspects of modern life as the smartphone-hating Rhys, and gives his version of the modern Northwest a distinctly Old West vibrational overlay. Things get really serious toward the end in a way we might not be totally prepared for, and doesn’t feel absolutely necessary, but perhaps it’s Walters’ way of saying the danger is real.
Walter is a beacon of wit, decency, and style.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9780062868145
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
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.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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