A tightly paced story of anti-colonial resistance and shared history that begs to be read in one sitting.
A brutal murder becomes the catalyst for an Indigenous redemption that brings believers together to revive a nearly forgotten religion.
Belinda and Hector know the story of La Reina de Las Chicharras all too well. Belinda first heard it during a childhood sleepover: Milagros Santos, an undocumented Mexican farmworker who was lynched by a group of White women in Texas in 1952, now answers to anyone who speaks her new name into a mirror, Bloody Mary–style. Hector bought the property on which the officially unsolved murder took place, and he now feels compelled to return to his curandero heritage after a lifetime spent scorning it. As Belinda and Hector dig deeper into the story, clues point toward a much more intricate tale, one in which Indigenous Mexican religious beliefs survived into the 20th century. Milagros and her twin sister, Concepcion, worshiped Santa Muerte—also known as Mictecacíhuatl, the Queen of the Dead. The ancient deity now answers to the dead woman's new name, harvesting mortal sacrifices to help revive Milagros as her daughter. When Mictecacíhuatl reveals herself in a viral video, the foundations of individual and institutional faith are tested worldwide, and an unexpected religious revival emerges. The White women responsible for Milagros' death become the first targets of Mictecacíhuatl's revenge, sandwiched chronologically between conquistadors and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who prey upon her people. Castro's novel shifts seamlessly from deliciously gory horror narrative to family saga to a tale of righteous vengeance, all while maintaining its unflinching condemnation of colonialism on both sides of the Mexican-American border.
A tightly paced story of anti-colonial resistance and shared history that begs to be read in one sitting.Pub Date: June 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-78758-601-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Flame Tree Press
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A master novelist in full command of his powers as a storyteller, prose stylist, and social observer.
Whitehead’s justly celebrated Harlem Trilogy comes to a triumphant, satisfying conclusion.
The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner has brought his decades-long saga of furniture retailer and part-time criminal fence Ray Carney into the 1980s, a time of starkly mixed blessings for a New York City galvanized by reckless real estate development, plagued with widespread homelessness, and immersed in crime and corruption of gaudy proportions. As with its two predecessors, Harlem Shuffle (2021) and Crook Manifesto (2023), this installment carves its historic period into three self-contained but interwoven stories set in three different years. The first takes place in 1981, when Ray, flush with pride over being named Sterling Furniture’s “Northeast Regional Dealer of the Month,” is confounded when wife Elizabeth is denied a loan for her travel business. So, to get her the money she needs, he joins a crew led by the redoubtable Uncle Rich, a legendary thief, embarking on a near-impossible heist at the Waldorf Astoria. Elizabeth also spearheads the second installment, which takes place two years later, when she recruits the dyspeptic Pepper, Ray’s friend and sometime coconspirator, as bodyguard for a jittery art dealer carrying a valuable African mask. When that object goes missing, Pepper and a hip young woman bearing a mohawk haircut and combat boots wander the seedier streets of Manhattan to locate it, crossing paths with a “Melancholy Hitman” also frantically pursuing the mask and leaving mutilated corpses in his wake. In the final section, taking place in 1986, Ray struggles to fulfill a posthumous obligation to his ill-fated cousin, Freddie, by using all his hard-earned wiles as salesman and felon to save Freddie’s son, Robert, from being framed (or worse) in the murder of a bent Queens lawyer. It’s as improbable as packing three page-turning thrillers into one book that’s sustained throughout by rich, engaging characterizations and lucid, provocative reflections on a community, a city, and a people it presents as both exasperating and captivating with equal intensity.
A master novelist in full command of his powers as a storyteller, prose stylist, and social observer.Pub Date: July 21, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550505
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Vivid characters are set adrift in a “ripped from the headlines” tableau that complicates the story, and the storytelling.
A diverting midlife story plucks at the secrets good people carry to the grave.
As a reader, Artie Dam—the protagonist of Strout’s 11th book—encounters Olive Kitteridge, “a crotchety old woman from Maine” and Strout’s most celebrated fictional character. Artie picked up the Pulitzer-anointed book centered on Olive after his wife, Evie, loved it, “oh, years ago now.” Strout is having a bit of fun—that “oh” is a trademark—even though she marbles her latest novel with marital infidelity, political anxiety, and suicide. Indeed, it is the fact that Olive’s father died by suicide that Artie, 57 and gaining a paunch, recalls now in his own dismalness. As the story begins, he is pondering the most discreet way to die, despite having been Massachusetts’ Teacher of the Year five years earlier. Artie seems the inverse of irascible Olive: beloved by his students; by his grown son, Rob; and by the English teacher, Anne, who quietly pines for him. But like Olive, Artie has distressing impulses—he steals a comb, then some expensive shirts. Much of the text bobs along on Artie’s stocktaking memories, chunked out in short, occasionally abrupt paragraphs. Strout’s storytelling is thinning a bit, like middle-aged hair. Then, midbook, she clobbers Artie with a brutal existential shock. In its wake, Strout surfs the nature of loneliness, corrosive secrets, and the convulsions of the 2024 presidential election. Hers is an unremittingly Blue State book, although Artie has one friend who, unbeknownst to him, supported Donald Trump. On the day after the election, Artie somberly concludes that his “country was committing suicide.” This is the first novel in which Strout entirely vacates Maine for another setting. But she sticks with Artie and, on the final pages, delivers him a satisfying finale.
Vivid characters are set adrift in a “ripped from the headlines” tableau that complicates the story, and the storytelling.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9798217154746
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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