by Tim Finch ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 2020
A lucid work carefully balanced between the terrors and consolations that fiction can provide.
The delicate work of the negotiating table frames a quietly intense novel of sudden grief and its aftermath.
Novelist and journalist Finch brings eloquent control to the story of Edvard Behrends, who leads a team of diplomats trying to resolve a wrenching conflict in an unnamed country via talks at a serene Austrian ski resort and who recalls the beauties of his surroundings and the Sisyphean nature of his task in a narrative addressed to his absent partner, Anna. Though Finch's experience as an activist for refugee rights lends the negotiation convincing realism, the real peace talks here are internal—and one-sided, for Anna, we soon learn, is dead, and the brilliance that has put Behrends at the pinnacle of his profession is nearly overmatched by the forces unleashed by a titanic loss. As work in the conference rooms threatens to founder, Behrends dances ever closer to a confrontation with the devastating certainty of death, quoting Larkin: "Most things may never happen: this one will." A man who enjoys the finer things, including fine things that come in a bottle, Behrends wears his literary influences, from Rebecca West to Thomas Mann, proudly. While this dialogue with books makes for intellectually bracing passages, the novel at moments feels like an essay on love and mortality in the guise of a tale that knows its way around a good Riesling. But as the full story of Anna's death is unspooled, chilliness gives way to the potent voice of a man whose vital self is being hollowed out by drink and grief. Behrends leaps back into focus even as his world threatens to recede into an alcoholic blur.
A lucid work carefully balanced between the terrors and consolations that fiction can provide.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-60945-616-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More by Tim Finch
BOOK REVIEW
by Tim Finch
Awards & Accolades
Likes
11
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
by Tana French ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
An absorbing crime yarn.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
11
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
A divorced American detective tries to blend into rural Ireland in this sequel to The Searcher (2020).
In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there might be gold in the nearby mountain with a vein that might run through some of their properties. (What, no leprechauns?) “It’s not sheep shite you’ll be smelling in a few months’ time, man,” he tells a farmer. “It’s champagne and caviar.” Some people have fun fantasizing about sudden riches, but they know better. Johnny’s pursuer, Cillian Rushborough, comes to town, and Johnny tries to convince him he could get rich by purchasing people’s land. Alas, someone bashes Rushborough’s brains in, and now there’s a murder mystery. The plot is a bit of a stretch, but the characters and their relationships work well. Trey detests Johnny for not being in her life, and now that he’s back, she neither wants nor needs him. She gets on much better with Cal. Still, she’s a testy teenager when she thinks someone is not treating her like an adult. Cal is aware of this, and he’s careful how he talks to her. Johnny, not so much: “I swear to fuck, women are only put on this earth to wreck our fuckin’ heads,” he whines about Trey’s mother, briefly forgetting he’s talking to Trey. The book abounds in local color and lively dialogue.
An absorbing crime yarn.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593493434
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Share your opinion of this book
More by Tana French
BOOK REVIEW
by Tana French
BOOK REVIEW
by Tana French
BOOK REVIEW
by Tana French
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
42
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2022
New York Times Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Share your opinion of this book
More by Barbara Kingsolver
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.