Seven compelling explorations of vacancy in another perfectly spare and atmospheric translation.
Empty homes, emptied lives, and emptying memories: Life's—particularly family life's—many emptinesses and emptyings abound in this ethereal collection.
Although its original Spanish publication preceded that of Little Eyes (2020), the author’s most recent translation into English, this collection may feel like a progression from McDowell's translations of Schweblin's other works, which dwell more squarely in the fantastic and the speculative, often pushing into nightmare territory, and into a quieter, more human-centered and realism-bound world—though one thrumming with just as much eerie tension, as Schweblin evokes the uncanny in the human rather than placing the human in the uncanny. In “None of That,” a woman finally discovers an appreciation for her mother's unusual pastime. In “My Parents and My Children,” a man confronts an uncomfortable situation he has been drawn into with his ex-wife and her new boyfriend when she asks him to bring his probably unsound and decidedly nudist parents to visit their children at a rented vacation home. A neighbor considers what might be driving a recurring cycle in “It Happens All the Time in This House,” where the woman next door throws her late son’s clothes over their fence and her husband comes, unfailingly, to retrieve them. “Breath From the Depths,” the collection's emotional pinnacle, introduces Lola, a paranoid and housebound elderly woman who's outlasted her will to live and her capacity to do anything about it, as her memory empties alongside the contents of her home. “Forty Centimeters Squared” finds an unnamed woman, after moving away to Spain, returned to Buenos Aires, her belongings packed in a storage unit and with no home to call her own. “An Unlucky Man” follows a girl whose younger sister’s antics have resulted in a trip to the hospital, where she is forgotten and ignored until she meets the unluckiest man in the world in the waiting room, who takes her on a birthday adventure that ends badly but might easily have ended even worse. And, finally, in “Out,” a woman steps out of the morass of what appears to be a failing relationship and, for a moment, into new possibilities, guided by a mysterious maintenance man who claims to have been fixing her building's fire escape—a self-described escapist.
Seven compelling explorations of vacancy in another perfectly spare and atmospheric translation.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-525-54139-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
An emotionally acute study of manliness.
Scenes from the life of a well-off but emotionally damaged man.
Szalay’s sixth novel is a study of István, who as a 15-year-old in Hungary is lured into a sexual relationship with a married neighbor; when he has a confrontation with the woman’s husband, the man falls down the stairs and dies. Add in stints in a juvenile facility and as a soldier in Iraq, and István enters his 20s almost completely stunted emotionally. (Saying much besides “Okay” sometimes seems utterly beyond him.) Fueled by id, libido, and street drugs, he seems destined to be a casualty until, while working as a bouncer at a London strip club, he helps rescue the owner of a security firm who’s been assaulted; soon, he’s hired as the driver for a tycoon and his wife, with whom he begins an affair. István is a fascinating character in a kind of negative sense—he’s intriguing for all the ways he fails to confront his trauma, all the missed opportunities to find deeper connections. To that end, Szalay’s prose is emotionally bare, deliberately clipped and declarative, evoking István’s unwillingness (or incapacity) to look inside himself; he occasionally consults with a therapist, but a relentless passivity keeps him from opening up much. His capacity to fail upwards eventually catches up with him, and the novel becomes a more standard story about betrayal and inheritances, but it also turns on small but meaningful moments of heroism that suggest a deeper character than somebody who, as someone suggests, “exemplif[ies] a primitive form of masculinity.” István’s relentlessly stony approach to existence grates at times—there are a few too many “okay”s in the dialogue—but Szalay’s distanced approach has its payoffs. Being closed off, like István, doesn’t close off the world, and at times has tragic consequences.
An emotionally acute study of manliness.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781982122799
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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