An often gripping tale of love and interplanetary survival.
Two strangers find themselves trapped in a hostile environment and must work together to survive in Monier’s debut SF novel.
Omar wakes up to find himself on a strange island, and after fending off a pack of wolflike creatures, he meets Shadia, a woman in the same circumstances as he is in. At first, it seems like they’re the only people there, but they soon find themselves confronted with a choice by a group that’s keen to experiment on them: submit and stay in captivity for three years or attempt to flee and possibly die. They also find out that their captors are Neanderthals who, instead of going extinct on Earth, went to the stars and made a home for themselves on another planet. Omar and Shadia do their best to resist their captors and break for freedom, but soon they give in and accept their fate. Along the way, they grow closer, and what starts as an association full of friction turns to love as they rely on each other to stay alive. Throughout the book, they’re given different reasons for their capture, and the author makes it clear that divisions run as deeply in Neanderthal society as they do on Earth. Mixed in with the chapters set on an alien world is the story of Omar, in an Earth hospital, telling the tale of his ordeal. The book ends with a warning from the friendly Neanderthals. Monier’s greatest strength is his ability to write characters who remain sympathetic even as they show the reader the worst aspects of themselves. Although Omar and Shadia are both skilled in different areas—Shadia has useful medical knowledge, for example—neither of them are superhuman; they’re just regular people in an unusual and terrible situation, and the way that their relationship develops feels organic. They, and readers, learn limited and often contradictory information from their captors, as well, which reinforces their status as abductees.
An often gripping tale of love and interplanetary survival.Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-73-749866-5
Page Count: 282
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fairy tale stuffed with a meaningful moral, this is a funny and heartwarming novel.
A good Italian American daughter’s 30-something rebellion forces her entire family to reckon with their choices, resulting in a happily-ever-after for all that’s like the best affogato: rich, bitter, sweet.
Giuseppina “Jess” Capodimonte Baratta lives in her parents’ basement, and it’s not the finished kind, but more like an old-fashioned cellar with a bed and a dresser. Her family has long struggled with money problems, so many that Jess had to go to community college instead of the four-year institutions her sister and brother attended. At 33, she’s landed back at her childhood home in Lake Como, New Jersey (known for its location between a lake and the Atlantic Ocean), because she’s left her husband, Bobby Bilancia, heir to Bilancia Meats and blue-eyed local heartthrob. Jess may not know what she wants for her life, but it isn’t nightly TV and then several kids with Bobby, whose idea of sophistication runs to capicola-ham rosettes. Then Uncle Louie, the proprietor of Capodimonte Marble and Stone who has mentored Jess as his deputy, dies of a heart attack and leaves the business in her hands. Unfortunately, there’s also some funny business that includes a side hustle with an associate known as “Googs” and a quarry’s worth of unpaid taxes. Jess chooses to ignore her overbearing mother’s advice and fly to Carrara, the home of the world’s most beautiful stones—and stonemasons, like Angelo Strazza, whose specialty is applying fragile gold leaf to carved pieces. From brushing up on her Italian to investigating Uncle Louie’s somewhat mysterious past, Jess soon discovers she needs less of her family’s assistance than she or they ever believed. Trigiani risks gilding the lily here, but by placing Jess’ love affair with Angelo alongside her love affair with her own future, she maintains a balance that will leave readers as satisfied as an Italian Sunday dinner would.
A fairy tale stuffed with a meaningful moral, this is a funny and heartwarming novel.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780593183359
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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