An important, coming-of-age tale with a sensitive, observant lead.
In Garvey’s autobiographical novel, a young Black protagonist (and narrator) learns a lot about his parents and about vicious racism, mostly on a cross-country car trek in the 1960s.
The spine of the novel is the Gardners’ road trip from Los Angeles to Miami in a new Plymouth Valiant. The plan is to ferry the car, father Emerson, mother Madeline, and the unnamed son to a triumphal return to their native Jamaica. Along the way, however, there are many flashbacks. Emerson showed great promise as a medical wannabe, and Madeline is a nurse and outspoken and ambitious. The boy is a precocious only child. Emerson is cautious and submissive when that seems prudent; Madeline is a firecracker, pushing the envelope in the Jim Crow South. The boy (he is reading Wright’s Black Boy in the back seat) is by turns confused, scared by his parents’ bickering, and stunned by the prejudice that was not quite so obvious on the West Coast. The climax of the novel occurs when the civil rights movement is coming to its fevered and most violent pitch. The ending is initially surprising, though not so much, perhaps, on reflection. Garvey is a very good writer, capable of striking similes (crumpled rejection letters “fluttered to the floor like crippled doves”) and the pithy apothegm (“I cannot turn endeavor into penance and pretend it’s virtue”). The changing exposition—shifting between place and time—can be confusing. But one does get used to it. What strikes the reader is the tragic gap—no, chasm—between these Black characters’ obvious talents and indomitable striving and the way that they get rebuffed time and time and time again. It bears mention that the kid in the back seat grew up to be a published writer and accomplished classical violinist.
An important, coming-of-age tale with a sensitive, observant lead.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-9822294-7-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Jonkro Books
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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