It’s light on plot, and those grim Chopik academics are close to straw men, but so what? Ziolkowski is off to a fine start.
What to do about Seth? The self-destructive punk roils a Kansas household in this sparkling debut.
Lewis Chopik has come home to Wichita to lick his wounds. The young graduate (Columbia, summa cum laude) should be buoyant, but he’s been dumped by his girlfriend, who’s traded up to snag a Rhodes Scholar. And he’s being badgered by his father Virgil, a Columbia professor and part of a formidable clan of academics, to pursue his studies, an unwelcome prospect. All his divorced mother Abby wants is for him to be happy. However, any hope of peace and quiet back home dissolves when his 20-year-old brother Seth appears. He’s been on a downward spiral since age 14, when a morning-glory trip convinced him death was an attractive destination. Since then he’s been tentatively diagnosed as bipolar; briefly married to a stripper in San Francisco; and almost killed by fellow street punks. He fits right in at Abby’s. His indulgent mom has always provided “havens for oddballs,” while busying herself with New -Age projects and a succession of “lifetime companions.” Her latest companion is unhappily sharing her with Bishop, a genial university chemistry teacher who’s cooking up “designer psychedelics” in Abby’s basement; he’s also helping her set up her latest project: storm-chasing with a New -Age twist. There’s never a dull moment in a novel which fires us up with snappy and often very funny dialogue; Seth, deranged but smart (those Chopik genes), takes down anyone in earshot with gleeful malice. The central relationship is that between the two brothers; Lewis loves Seth dearly but is powerless to slow his descent. They will be ejected from a bowling alley and a biker bar; after Seth’s frightening rant in a graveyard, Lewis realizes he must be committed. Then the whole gang takes off after a tornado—for Seth, the perfect solution.
It’s light on plot, and those grim Chopik academics are close to straw men, but so what? Ziolkowski is off to a fine start.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60945-070-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
A treat for fans of The Evil Dead or Zombieland, complete with affordable solutions for better living.
A hardy band of big-box retail employees must dig down for their personal courage when ghosts begin stalking them through home furnishings.
You have to give it up for the wave of paranormal novels that have plagued the last decade in literature; at least they’ve made writers up their games when it comes to finding new settings in which to plot their scary moments. That’s the case with this clever little horror story from longtime pop-culture journalist Hendrix (Satan Loves You, 2012, etc.). Set inside a disturbingly familiar Scandinavian furniture superstore in Cleveland called Orsk, the book starts as a Palahniuk-tinged satire about the things we own—the novel is even wrapped in the form of a retail catalog complete with product illustrations. Our main protagonist is Amy, an aimless 24-year-old retail clerk. She and an elderly co-worker, Ruth Anne, are recruited by their anal-retentive boss, Basil (a closet geek), to investigate a series of strange breakages by walking the showroom floor overnight. They quickly uncover two other co-workers, Matt and Trinity, who have stayed in the store to film a reality show called Ghost Bomb in hopes of catching a spirit on tape. It’s cute and quite funny in a Scooby Doo kind of way until they run across Carl, a homeless squatter who's just trying to catch a break. Following an impromptu séance, Carl is possessed by an evil spirit and cuts his own throat. It turns out the Orsk store was built on the remains of a brutal prison called the Cuyahoga Panopticon, and its former warden, Josiah Worth, has returned from the dead to start up operations again. It sounds like an absurd setting for a haunted-house novel, but Hendrix makes it work to the story’s advantage, turning the psychological manipulations and scripted experiences that are inherent to the retail experience into a sinister fight for survival.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59474-526-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.
Inseparable identical twin sisters ditch home together, and then one decides to vanish.
The talented Bennett fuels her fiction with secrets—first in her lauded debut, The Mothers (2016), and now in the assured and magnetic story of the Vignes sisters, light-skinned women parked on opposite sides of the color line. Desiree, the “fidgety twin,” and Stella, “a smart, careful girl,” make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans. The novel opens 14 years later as Desiree, fleeing a violent marriage in D.C., returns home with a different relative: her 8-year-old daughter, Jude. The gossips are agog: “In Mallard, nobody married dark....Marrying a dark man and dragging his blueblack child all over town was one step too far.” Desiree's decision seals Jude’s misery in this “colorstruck” place and propels a new generation of flight: Jude escapes on a track scholarship to UCLA. Tending bar as a side job in Beverly Hills, she catches a glimpse of her mother’s doppelgänger. Stella, ensconced in White society, is shedding her fur coat. Jude, so Black that strangers routinely stare, is unrecognizable to her aunt. All this is expertly paced, unfurling before the book is half finished; a reader can guess what is coming. Bennett is deeply engaged in the unknowability of other people and the scourge of colorism. The scene in which Stella adopts her White persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion. It calls up Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the book's 50-year-old antecedent. Bennett's novel plays with its characters' nagging feelings of being incomplete—for the twins without each other; for Jude’s boyfriend, Reese, who is trans and seeks surgery; for their friend Barry, who performs in drag as Bianca. Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp. In the second half, Jude spars with her cousin Kennedy, Stella's daughter, a spoiled actress.
Kin “[find] each other’s lives inscrutable” in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-53629-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
