Stan the bacteria man suddenly appears in the Oval Office, and the Secret Service deems him a Being of Unknown Origin. He takes on various humanoid forms, sometimes dripping an “unidentified fluid.” Considering him a threat, the Secret Service guns him down. But Stan merely turns into a puddle and later returns to the Oval Office only to be shot again. Finally, White House rep Veylet sits and talks with Stan at the Reflecting Pool. But Veylet, who uses they/them pronouns, doesn’t get the answers they want; Stan doesn’t seem to know where he’s from and randomly turns into puddles (even sans gunfire). Wherever he goes, Stan faces animosity from ignorant people who fear this unusual person. In Tennessee, xenophobic soy farmer Jim Bean spews curses and slurs at Stan and, convinced he’s an undocumented immigrant, tries to kill him. Though vague about what he’s up to (it involves “cooking”), Stan soon brings a special, more articulate, someone with him to Washington—so that the administration will fully understand his intention. M.A.’s brisk story is endlessly amusing. He employs repetition to great effect; characters persistently use their “mouth holes” for such simple acts as speaking and casual drinking. Several topical issues, like police brutality and immigration, are fodder for well-executed satire. Descriptions are scant save for Stan’s ever changing body. He even has pockets when he’s not a “slimy mass.” M.A.’s artistic renderings of Stan crop up throughout the novel. Despite this satire’s minimalist plot, there’s definitely resolution, at least regarding the likable titular character.
A short tale that absurdly and humorously tackles social issues.Pub Date: May 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73-730201-8
Page Count: 113
Publisher: SMA Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | LITERARY FICTION
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If novelists are auditioning to play God, Hilderbrand gets the part.
29
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From the greenroom of the afterlife—make that Benjamin Moore "Parsley Snips" green—a newly dead Nantucket novelist watches life unfold without her.
In her 27th novel, Hilderbrand gives herself an alter ego—beloved beach-novel author Vivian Howe—sends her out for a morning jog, and immediately kills her off. A hit-and-run driver leaves Vivi dead by the side of the road, where her son's best friend discovers her body—or was he responsible for the accident? Vivi doesn't know, nor does she know yet that her daughter Willa is pregnant, or that her daughter Carson is having a terribly ill-advised affair, or that her son, Leo, has a gnawing secret, or that her ex is getting tired of the girl he dumped her for. She will discover all this and more as she watches one last summer on Nantucket play out under the tutelage of Martha, her "Person," who receives her in the boho-chic waiting room of the Beyond. Hermès-scarved Martha explains that Vivi will have three nudges—three chances to change the course of events on Earth and prevent her bereaved loved ones from making life-altering mistakes. She will also get to watch the publication of what will be her last novel, titled Golden Girl, natch, and learn the answers to two questions: Will the secret about her own life she buried in this novel come to light (who cares, really—she's dead now), and will it hit No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list (now there's an interesting question). She'll also get to see that one of her biggest wrongs is posthumously righted and that her kids have learned her most important lesson. As Willa says to Carson, "You know how she treats the characters in her books? She gives them flaws, she portrays them doing horrible things—but the reader loves them anyway. Because Mom loves them. Because they’re human.”
If novelists are auditioning to play God, Hilderbrand gets the part.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-31642008-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
Categories: FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION
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PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Legal eagle and mystery maven Grisham shifts gears with a novel about roundball.
What possessed Grisham to stop writing about murder in the Spanish moss–dripping milieus of the Deep South is anyone’s guess, and why he elected to write about basketball, one might imagine, speaks to some deep passion for the game. The depth of that love doesn’t quite emerge in these pages, flat of affect, told almost as if a by-the-numbers biography of an actual player. As it is, Grisham invents an all-too-believable hero in Samuel Sooleymon, who plays his way out of South Sudan, a nation wrought by sectarian violence—Sooley is a Dinka, Grisham instructs, of “the largest ethnic class in the country,” pitted against other ethnic groups—and mired in poverty despite the relative opulence of the capital city of Juba, with its “tall buildings, vibrancy, and well-dressed people.” A hard-charging but heart-of-gold coach changes his life when he arrives at the university there, having been dismissed earlier as a “nonshooting guard.” Soon enough Sooley is sinking three-pointers with alarming precision, which lands him a spot on an American college team. Much of the later portion of Grisham’s novel bounces between Sooley’s on-court exploits, jaw-dropping as they are, and his efforts to bring his embattled family, now refugees from civil war, to join him in the U.S.; explains Grisham, again, “Beatrice and her children were Dinka, the largest tribe in South Sudan, and their strongman was supposedly in control of most of the country,” though evidently not the part where they lived. Alas, Sooley, beloved of all, bound for a glorious career in the NBA, falls into the bad company that sudden wealth and fame can bring, and it all comes crashing down in a morality play that has only the virtue of bringing this tired narrative to an end.
Unlike baseball, basketball has contributed little to world literature. Call this Exhibit A.Pub Date: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-385-54768-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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