Ginster’s name belongs with modern literature’s antiwar activists from the Good Soldier Švejk to Yossarian.
One of the most unconventional World War I novels by one of Europe’s most important cultural critics returns to print.
The title character of this 1928 novel by journalist, editor, and film scholar Kracauer (1889-1966) is a 25-year-old architecture student in a German city referred to only as M. It’s 1914 and, with his country now at war, Ginster seems unmoved by the tumult around him. He tells an uncle: “Since a piece of land way out in the East has been occupied by the enemy, they go on about it as if it were their own personal property. They didn’t give a damn about the piece of land before.” Not even the pursuit of his own ambition seems to concern him as he “lack[s] the ability to apply such circumspection to the question of his future place in society. He would have preferred to become nothing at all....” It’s hard not to make comparisons to Melville’s Bartleby, the scrivener, except that Ginster’s passivity about the war doesn’t keep his life from being affected by it. Ginster eventually drifts into military service out of obligation to his family, but he pretends to have a “general physical debility” that puts him on “permanent” home front duty, where he serves his country by “peeling potatoes against the enemy.” At times, Kracauer’s hero, befitting the author’s work as a movie critic, seems like an amalgam of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in his often-deterred efforts to retain his individuality in the face of overpowering forces. Yet the relentless accumulation of raw details about day-to-day life within and outside the military magnifies the absurdity of war and, at times, mitigates the comedic elements of Ginster’s situation. It’s the kind of mix one expects from a conscientious reporter and compulsive aesthetician trying to make sense of a senseless time. The blend doesn’t always work well; sometimes you come across numbing stretches in the narrative reminiscent of those in Kracauer’s later critical works, such as From Caligari to Hitler (1947). But there’s an intensity of vision in this novel that carries the exuberance of a young writer not only discovering his voice but feeling confident enough to test its capacities.
Ginster’s name belongs with modern literature’s antiwar activists from the Good Soldier Švejk to Yossarian.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781681378145
Page Count: 336
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.
A dark fantasy set on the Yale campus ends with a bang.
Galaxy “Alex” Stern of Lethe House, one of Yale’s storied secret societies, has been to hell and back. That was in Hell Bent (2023), the middle book in Bardugo’s Ninth House trilogy, where the secret societies wield not just temporal power but magic as well. Hell Bent ended with Alex and her friends rescuing her crush, mentor, and fellow Lethe officer, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington V, from eternal torment. One small wrinkle: The demon Golgarot used Alex’s blood to wedge a door open between Hell and New Haven, and his minions are slipping through. Also, one of the group has turned into a vampire, and Darlington is now half demon. “He’d given up some part of himself to preserve the rest of his human soul. He’d become both prisoner and warden.” As the final book opens, the exhausted crew are hunting yet another monster. They can’t keep this up forever; they will have to find a way to close the portal. Alex has the energetic, driven melancholy of the hard-boiled, dark fantasy heroine she is. She believes “magic is real, but safe is make-believe,” as her roommate puts it. An open hellmouth, a supportive scholar, a vampire whose story arcs precariously toward redemption, a gentleman fiend who gets literally horny when aroused, a California girl with rare supernatural powers who cracks wise as she fights fiends—the series has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spawn, but Bardugo’s way with words and her keen social observation keep the book from feeling derivative. A demon’s classic New England house is decorated with “ruthlessly inoffensive watercolor seascapes”; Lethe’s board president “wore the new uniform of Wall Street: a dress shirt, khakis, and a fleece with a Yale Y embroidered over the heart, as if he were on his way to a hostile takeover followed by some light rock climbing.” Will Alex and her friends get the door shut without losing Darlington? Bardugo injects her protagonist with such a convincing mix of cynicism and hope that failure seems like a distinct possibility.
Sharp writing, vivid characters, and puzzle box plotting bring the trilogy to a ringing conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781250884312
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.
The World Trade Center attacks are at the center of an intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades in both directions.
“You could brace for your sister to die of a terminal illness, only to have your healthy sibling killed in a random car wreck. You could carry a baby safely to term and then, on a bright blue day in September, walk into a building that collapsed beneath your feet.” Or you could be a character in a Jodi Picoult novel and face all of the above and much, much more. Fans of My Sister’s Keeper (2004) will notice a reference to that novel in the preceding quote and be glad to hear a character from that book is back. During the Covid-19 pandemic, former teenage delinquent Jesse Fitzgerald, now a detective on the Providence, Rhode Island, police force, meets Molly Ambrose, a 19-year-old prodigy who runs the state’s emergency preparedness and response program. “Despite the fact that there were fifteen years between us and we both had enough baggage to fill a cargo hold,” as Molly puts it, the two fall madly in love. The baggage she’s referring to includes, on her side, a mother who died on 9/11 when Molly was less than three months old. Picoult supplies her signature delightful banter and gift for depicting passion and romance to win the reader’s sympathy for this possibly questionable match between dedicated public servants, whose favorite game at bedtime is “Who can think of the most terrifying worst-case scenario?” Very little more can be revealed without spoilers, but trigger warnings for this book would be a long list indeed, ranging from suicide and filicide to rape and mental illness (welcome to Picoultland!). Subplots visit evangelical and Navajo cultures as well as the ins and outs of polygraphy. Make sure to read the afterword in which Picoult explains her real-life sources of inspiration.
The queen of social activist novels has done it again. Impressive, important, and fun to read.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9780593726259
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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