A well-told, deeply felt addition to a ghostly mystery series.
Charleston’s favorite ghost-talking divorcée returns in Alexander’s latest supernatural mystery, the second in a series.
Reluctant clairvoyant Tipsy Collins is still trying to figure out life as a single mother of three. She’s (mostly) quieted the ghosts that haunt her home, though one, Henry Mott, has decided to hang around and work on his memoir. Tipsy’s relationship with her boyfriend, Will Garrison, is beginning to sour, and though she’s gotten back into painting, she’s still close to broke. That’s why she drives out to Sullivan’s Island to meet with the slightly kooky Pamella Brewton about a possible commission. The cottage, painted from fence to shutters in that unmistakable Southern shade called haint blue, is haunted by Pamella’s deceased grandmother, Ivy More Brewton. Ivy, the story goes, fell off a dock in 1944, but Tipsy suspects it wasn’t that simple. Tipsy doesn’t want to get involved—she’s furious Will told Pamella about her psychic abilities—but when Pamella offers $50,000 for exorcising “Meemaw,” how can Tipsy refuse? She makes contact with Ivy, who insists she can’t leave the house without her “true love,” and she isn’t talking about Pamella’s grandfather. As Tipsy’s own romantic life crumbles, can she learn something about love and loss from this stubborn ghost? Alexander’s prose is precise and evocative, particularly when she’s describing the environments of coastal South Carolina: “Tipsy is on a dune on one of those random fall afternoons in the Lowcountry that feel like summer’s hangover. The tall grass around her is brownish. The remaining yellow and white flowers droop like the tongues of panting dogs.” The novel unfolds at a leisurely pace, driven by Tipsy and her relationships as much as by the haunting plot. Alexander, as in her previous installment, Charleston Green (2020), works in the tradition of Southern women’s fiction as much as in supernatural mystery, and she blends the two genres together into a seamless, not-too-heavy exploration of how difficult it can be to act once a relationship has run its course.
A well-told, deeply felt addition to a ghostly mystery series.Pub Date: April 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64-704326-1
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Bublish, Incorporated
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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