A compelling and poignant journey of self-discovery that spans continents and generations.
A Spanish American professor uncovers her rich family history in Maura’s novel.
In the 1960s, Odilia falls for a man named Zimmerman after she attends one of his lectures in Madrid. She finds out that they were both raised in Spain, but the rest of Zimmerman’s background remains mysterious. Rumors suggest that he works for the CIA, partly because he spends considerable time in the United States. After a whirlwind courtship, he convinces Odilia to move with him to upstate New York, where she serves as his teaching assistant at a small college. They marry, and Odilia gives birth to Lola—the narrator, who later becomes a professor herself; she relates the story of her parents over the course of the novel. Soon after Lola’s birth, Zimmerman disappears. Lola and her mother live in small-town Vermont and then in Massachusetts, frequently visiting Odilia’s family in Spain. Lola struggles without a father figure: “I secretly hoped he was dead, because that was the only excuse that would justify the fact that he was not with us.” As an adult, she pieces together her family history—learning, for example, that her father was in fact a prominent anti-fascist and a member of the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom. The depiction of Odilia’s background feels rushed, with quite a bit of summary, but the novel shines when Lola narrates her own life. Maura vividly captures Lola’s multifaceted childhood, as in this description of her grandmother’s kitchen, where the cook pummels veal cutlets with “the menacing blows of her large gray stone, shaped like a rather flat Idaho potato.” By comparison, New England, where the adults “seem sad” and “have cottage cheese for lunch,” feels bleak, indeed. There’s a well-crafted moment when Lola is on a flight to Spain, during which she clutches motion sickness bags, chews Dramamine pills, and resents the smell of “American brewed coffee…that wafted out of the airborne kitchenette.” It’s a stunning sequence that effectively dramatizes her conflicted feelings about the two countries she calls home.
A compelling and poignant journey of self-discovery that spans continents and generations.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951627-12-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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