An awkwardly executed work with a by-the-numbers plot.
In Duffy’s fantasy novel, an ordinary man is sent from heaven back to Earth, reborn into a new body.
John Robinson is middle-aged, underemployed, and unremarkable when he’s struck by a stray bullet and killed. He then enters a farcical and vaguely bureaucratic afterlife with “officers” and “assistants” filling in rank-and-file positions in an office-park heaven. Because he lived such a mundane life, Andrea—one of God’s main subordinates and the officer in charge of John’s file—informs him that his case for getting into heaven is on shaky ground. In a show of benevolence, however, God and his team agree to give John a do-over, returning him to Earth in the form of an infant named Peter but giving him a strict timeline of “40-years to find a wife, a family, and a good job to support them” and, of course, none of his memories from his past life or of his time in heaven. This novel begins with a fun, tongue-in-cheek romp through the afterlife—a diverting, if familiar, concept. However, it fails to maintain its momentum. Duffy’s prose is strongest in the managerial world of heaven; the scenes there feel lively, with tongue-in-cheek idioms like “the big guy,” referring to God, and John’s entire life slimmed down to a small file (“I read it quickly but know all the details very well,” Andrea blithely remarks). Yet the depiction of heaven is just a framing device for what is ultimately a predictable and rather preachy tale. John-as-Peter fumbles through life, working at a dead-end job in a Catholic high school and failing to make meaningful romantic connections—until he meets Teresa, a stereotypical sex worker with a heart of gold, with whom he starts to form an earnest relationship. Although the narrative has a ticking clock, the story of Peter’s life and hopeful redemption is just as unengaging as John’s previous existence. The often stilted prose in these sections doesn’t help, nor does the character’s post-reincarnation proselytizing, although more devout readers may warm to this novel’s religious overtones.
An awkwardly executed work with a by-the-numbers plot.Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-71-898467-5
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An action-packed, brightly detailed historical novel not much hampered by its thinly characterized central figure.
A free-spirited woman forges a career as a writer and journalist, risking scandal and war zones to follow her heart.
Allende’s latest opens in San Francisco in 1873, introducing Emilia at age 7, the illegitimate daughter of Molly Walsh, who, as a novice nun, was seduced and abandoned by wealthy Chilean Gonzalo Andrés del Valle. Molly goes on to a successful marriage, Emilia grows up with a loving stepfather, and at 17 she begins writing, then publishing, sensational dime novels under the pseudonym Brandon J. Price. By 23, she’s a journalist with a column in The Daily Examiner, though still forced to hide her gender behind her pen name. Rule breaking is in her nature, and while she accepts, for now, lower pay than men, she decides on a trip to New York to take a lover and learns to control her own contraception. Later, finally writing under her own name, she’s commissioned to go to Chile and cover its civil war from a human angle, accompanied by colleague and friend Eric Whelan, whose focus is the military aspect. Chilean revolutionary politics make for less sprightly reading, but Emilia’s individual encounters with members of high and low society lend atmosphere. These include the president, a great aunt, and eventually her father—now alone, regretful, and mortally ill. Although he disapproves of working women, the two share a “desire to see the world and experience everything intensely,” and when he offers to recognize Emilia as his legitimate child, she accepts. Now the story gathers pace, with Emilia—always and predictably the rebel—witnessing the horrors of battle, discovering that she and Eric are in love, and getting arrested. Not quite plausibly, she instigates a further sequence of impulsive moves before the story is permitted to conclude.
An action-packed, brightly detailed historical novel not much hampered by its thinly characterized central figure.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593975091
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
© 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.
