Buttenwieser’s sketches are more like pathology slides of the human condition than snapshots of happy family picnics.
Families of all sorts—accidental, circumstantial, and intentional—populate 12 short stories that provide glimpses of hard luck and trouble in the rusted-out and mildewed parts of contemporary America.
Buttenwieser’s title story recounts the dysthemic details of a road trip to a second-rate attraction taken by a father and his two daughters without the company of their flagrantly faithless wife and mother. An intentional family of sorts is formed by the bar regulars in “Evidence,” which is narrated in the second person ("You always come here by yourself, and while no one quite talks directly to you, you are not left out either"). A dead-end housekeeping job in a dilapidated motel, ironically named after a famous explorer, allows the protagonist of "Nights at the Marco Polo" to observe kindness in the face of situational misery when the manager lets kids from the homeless families being housed there play in the hallways despite rules to the contrary. In "Inside the World of Twilight," a child gone missing at the zoo creates both panic and an unexpected moment of connection between an estranged father and his adult daughter. Most of Buttenwieser’s characters seem resigned to their fates—even the ones who had formed an escape plan—and there is little expectation of anything really good happening to them. Everyone is treading water. A frustrating lack of opportunity permeates virtually every environment in Buttenwieser’s world of lonely voyeurs, children of divorce, and latchkey kids. Rarely do changes in circumstance or attitude occur in the course of any of these stories, creating a flipbook of sad portraits, not family movies.
Buttenwieser’s sketches are more like pathology slides of the human condition than snapshots of happy family picnics.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-945588-55-6
Page Count: 134
Publisher: Four Way
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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