Artful and moving tales; a treasure trove for fiction fans.
A short story collection offers 11 vignettes about love and loss.
The unifying theme in Sgambati’s tales, many of them previously published in journals, is the effect of memory on the present. In “Forgiveness,” Lena’s health and mental faculties are failing in her advanced age, and she relies on her son, Charlie, to take care of her. She contemplates how she and her now dead husband treated Charlie, especially their meanness about his gay sexuality, and she seems amazed and thankful he’s still willing to take care of her. In “Oxford Avenue Station,” Colin is still tortured about whether his wife committed suicide or simply slipped and fell in front of a train on the El and is comforted by a stranger’s beautiful lie. In “Lila’s Cinema,” a woman in a nursing facility is surprised to realize the impact she’s had on her granddaughter Olive, through her love of movies, and how she has provided joy to her fellow residents by curating screenings. In “What Took You So Long,” a man has an epiphany about his happiness while exploring some family history in a small town after his divorce. The heartfelt and finely realized stories are surprising in their twists and turns and provide a panoply of human relationships with many LGBTQ characters. The author explores the personal and physical hell that gender reassignment recipients often endure through the eyes of Emma, a bed-and-breakfast owner who caters to patients of a local plastic surgeon. It’s an effective choice—Emma has experienced abuse of her own and empathizes with the struggle of young Avi, seeking to become whom he has always been. Sgambati’s characters are complex and tragic but also beautiful. And his language is precise and evocative. In “Grave Companions,” he puts readers in the setting with sensory details: “The diner smelled of damp raincoats, drenched umbrellas, coffee and bacon, hot grease from the grill, and of the hot layers of paint that bubbled and peeled away from old radiators like crumbling memories.”
Artful and moving tales; a treasure trove for fiction fans.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947917-35-4
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Fomite
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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