A promising but padded work that’s hampered by its slow pace.
A visit from Benito Mussolini upends the lives of an anti-Fascist family in el Moncef’s novella set in 1930s Libya.
There’s nothing more important to the Khaldoon family than loyalty. Indeed, the Italian occupation of their native Benghazi means that loyalty is more important than ever, but it’s frequently put to the test. According to their mother’s wishes, 9-year-old Mariam Khaldoon and her sister, Zaynab, attend a so-called “Mussolini school” to further their secular education. Their merchant father, a committed anti-Fascist, regards their attendance at the school as a capitulation to the occupiers. After accidentally splitting her lip on a washboard, Mariam returns from the infirmary and encounters Markunda, a Tuareg woman who insists on reading her fortune: “The reading did not last more than ten or fifteen minutes,” Mariam recalls years later, “and yet Markunda was able to put her finger on some of the most crucial things my inner world revolved around: the inexplicable sensitivities; the middle-of-the-night onslaughts of unruly ideas and unrelenting mental energy.” Markunda predicts that Mariam will do marvelous things in the future, but the youngster has no idea just what they will entail. The answer arrives a few years later when Mussolini himself visits Benghazi. Mariam and Zaynab are chosen among all the girls to welcome Il Duce to their school—a move that their father interprets as a deliberate effort to shame him for his work to fund the resistance against Fascist rule. Will Mariam betray her loyalty to her father, her family, and her country by doing what the teachers at her school tell her to do?
El Moncef’s prose is elegant and evocative; he captures not only the street life of Benghazi, but the imaginative mind of his narrator Mariam: “I caught myself playing a game: narrowing my eyes and tilting my head slightly, visualizing the wide neoclassical building at the end of the long, slate-cobbled alley as one of the messy watercolors I would paint with Mother’s awkward help.” The novella (which, at fewer than 70 pages, feels very much like a short story) seems overpacked; in addition to a list of characters and unnecessary maps of Benghazi and the Khaldoon household, there’s a 15-page introductory note by Mari Ruti, a professor of critical theory and gender and sexuality studies at the University of Toronto. Additionally, the plot’s main action is nested within two separate frame narratives. All of these layers have the unintentional effect of drawing the reader’s attention to how slight and uneventful the narrative ultimately is. A great deal of text is expended on the incident of Mariam injuring her lip, for example, even though it reveals very little regarding the central conflicts of the story. However, the setting is compelling and well rendered, and the relationship between Mariam and her father is worthy of exploration. Readers will likely wish that they didn’t have to wade through all of the additional, unneeded material to get to it.
A promising but padded work that’s hampered by its slow pace.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2022
ISBN: 9782954996530
Page Count: 106
Publisher: Penelope Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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