A wildly ambitious novel about Iran’s past, present, and future filled with longing and fury.
Azar explores the roots of the Iranian revolution and its aftermath through the spiritual journey of one young woman.
Given that Azar left Iran after several arrests and now lives in Australia, and that her translator is anonymous “for security reasons,” it’s no surprise that her romantic and spiritual fabulism is steeped in resistance to the country’s oppressive government. The influence of both García Márquez and Pasternak whispers throughout. Narrator Shokoofeh begins her decades-long story in 1976, when she's 15, living in the family mansion and obsessed with the concept of love. Her father is a professor at the University of Tehran and the family is Zoroastrian, members of a religious minority in Iran. Many of the supernatural events in the story relate to Zoroastrian mythology: The boundary between the living and dead, who appear in multitudes, is permeable; Shokoof is loaned a magical Ball of Light; the Lord of Worlds has a love affair with Eblis, a mysterious woman of mythic power who appears in different guises in other scenes. More straightforward is Azar’s retelling of the 1979 Revolution, which was closely followed by the Iran-Iraq War. The author makes a strong case against the misgovernance, brutal oppression, and general chaos of the regime, focusing on fictional characters but also naming real names. The spine of the novel is Shokoof’s spiritual and physical journey as she searches for her missing brother on the front lines of battle and navigates a romantic love triangle with two cousins. One is her “restless lover” Behnam, an idealistic, communist-leaning intellectual to whom she’s committed her life, the other Bahnam, a ruthless Revolutionary Guard whose unrequited love for Shokoof never dissipates. Although readers may sometimes get lost, especially when the author’s imagination spirals in multiple directions at once, they can expect impassioned, gorgeous writing.
A wildly ambitious novel about Iran’s past, present, and future filled with longing and fury.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9798889660972
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
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
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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
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