Conklin has created a heartening look at a community whose people realize they're better together than alone.
The story of a woman trying to isolate herself from the world and the town where she’s holed up.
It's 2019, and 29-year-old Darcy Clipper returns to her hometown of Murbridge, Massachusetts, after her husband, Skip, leaves her for a sky diving instructor. As an only child, she hopes to escape into the comfort of her parents' care, but when she arrives at her childhood home, she discovers her folks have moved to a retirement community in Arizona and didn't tell her because they didn't want to upset her. Fortunately, they're not planning to sell their house for a while. Darcy spirals into a circle of depression, grief, and self-isolation. Her only contact is with an online community message board and a police officer who's called to the house regularly by spying neighbors accusing her of trespassing. She pages through her parents' National Geographic collection and doesn't leave the house all winter until she eats her way through the canned food her mother stored in the basement ahead of Y2K. Then, with only a few cans of chickpeas left, her point of view starts to shift. After a shower and a good primal scream, she decides to get more involved in the community, albeit in tiny chunks punctuated by extreme social anxiety. Searching for missing pets posted on the community board, she finds the reward money easy and the outdoor air and blooming tulips good for her mood. Her confidence lifts through her interactions with other people, including chance encounters with bird-watchers and a job working for Marcus, one of the town's newest residents, who wants to build a public playground on an empty lot next to his house. As spring turns into summer, the community board becomes a place of threats and protests against the playground, spurred on by a corporate developer who wants to turn the land into a casino. Darcy must decide whether to take a stand or return to the walls of her childhood bedroom. Readers feel Darcy's isolation through the first quarter of the novel and, like the main character, relax into the enjoyment of getting to know the quirky lives of those who populate the neighborhood.
Conklin has created a heartening look at a community whose people realize they're better together than alone.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780062959379
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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