A timely patchwork of fictional bits and pieces that lands few punches.
A compact collection offers fictional vignettes.
The subtitle of this work hints at the form of flash fiction, which is characterized by brevity— usually 100 to 200 words grouped around a pithy hook or twist. Regardless of what the “Flesh Friction” mentioned in that subtitle means (it’s never made clear), the book’s contents reflect the elements of flash fiction. This is a compilation of two dozen or so quick dramatic bits, usually well under a page in length, with the whole book being only a few dozen pages long. Two other features found in flash fiction—slangy delivery and a tendency to sprinkle in sexual references—are likewise present in many of these miniature chapters. Readers should expect explicit sexual references and racial epithets. Throughout these stories, the author invokes figures from the current news cycle—Bill Gates, Betsy DeVos, Kanye West, Donald Trump—and employs plenty of attempts at humor in order to make each vignette snappy and readable. Readers are clearly expected to be already familiar with American politics and culture. McGrouchpants admirably tackles a wide range of provocative subjects and offers some amusing tidbits here. But even knowledgeable readers will sometimes be at a loss since the author frequently lapses into incoherent babbling, as in “Why Big Pharma and Sociopathic Sex Advice-Givers are Shoveling Dirt Over Generation X’ers and Wilhelm Reich’s Graves” and other tales. A postscript to “ ‘FAMILY TIES’ and ‘GROWING PAINS’ Re-Runs Are Reality!” tells readers: “P.S. Try The Marx-Engels Reader, The Federalist Papers, Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, The Interpretation of Dreams, and Trotsky’s The Russian Revolution (Abridged)…or, shut up! Shoot pool”—with the whimsicality obviously intended to be offbeat and cynical. Yet the result often reads like a slightly protracted and extremely disjointed series of in-jokes that fall flat, rendered in prose that’s jumpy and sneering rather than sharp and funny. Even flash fiction fans will likely be disappointed.
A timely patchwork of fictional bits and pieces that lands few punches.Pub Date: June 9, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 41
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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