A promising debut by an author with an amusing approach to life.
Business at his pizza place is slow and his aging parents need money, leading Knox Thompson to deal drugs—a vocation that quickly turns perilous.
The permanently disheveled, 40-year-old Thompson, who lives in his hometown of Richmond, Kentucky, stumbles into dealing. After winning big at a backroom poker game in a shady nearby town, he is forced into forking over his winnings by one of the players, a nasty drug supplier named Burl, in exchange for a pound of marijuana. If Knox refuses to comply, he won't make it to his car in one piece. Not knowing what else to do with the weed, in which he has invested all his money, Knox starts selling it. It's only a matter of time before he's buying another pound from Burl, making dumb decisions, and getting in way over his head. Burl's sadistic enforcer, Greek, starts paying him unpleasant visits. And Knox's hard-edged new girlfriend, Darla, a tattoo artist with whom he watches old videotapes of My So-Called Life, leaves town. Though the book suffers from an overreliance on sadistic violence and a too-tidy ending, this is a top-notch debut with a winning narrative voice and unexpectedly multidimensional characters. Even as he's making Knox's life miserable, Burl develops an affection for him. "I never seen anything like you," he says to the pizza man. "You're smart, you just ain't no good at thinking."
A promising debut by an author with an amusing approach to life.Pub Date: March 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-949199-28-4
Page Count: 264
Publisher: West Virginia Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
This timely novel depicts the heart- and spirit-breaking difficulties faced by illegal immigrants with meticulous...
A Chinese woman who works in a New York nail salon doesn’t come home one day; her young son is raised by well-meaning strangers who cannot heal his broken heart.
We meet Bronx fifth-grader Deming Guo on the day his mother disappears without a trace. From there, the story moves both forward and backward, intercutting between the narrative of his bumpy path to adulthood and his mother’s testimony. Gradually the picture comes together—Deming was conceived in China and born in America because his unmarried mother, Peilan, decided she would rather borrow the $50,000 to be smuggled to America than live out her life in her rural village. After her baby is born she tries to hide him underneath her sewing machine at work, but clearly she cannot care for him and work enough to repay the loan shark. She sends him back to China to be raised by her aging father. When Deming is 6, Yi Ba dies, and the boy rejoins his mother, who now has a boyfriend and lives with him; his sister, Vivian; and her son, Michael. After Peilan disappears, Deming is shuffled into foster care—his new parents are a pair of white academics upstate. Ten years later, it is Michael who tracks down a college dropout with a gambling problem named Daniel Wilkinson and sends a message that, if he is Deming Guo, he has information about his mother. The twists and turns continue, with the answers about Peilan’s disappearance withheld until the final pages. Daniel’s involvement in the alternative music scene is painted in unnecessary detail, but otherwise the specificity of the intertwined stories is the novel’s strength. Ko’s debut is the winner of the 2016 Pen/Bellwether Prize for Fiction for a novel that addresses issues of social justice, chosen by Barbara Kingsolver.
This timely novel depicts the heart- and spirit-breaking difficulties faced by illegal immigrants with meticulous specificity.Pub Date: May 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61620-688-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
An endearing tale about a magical correspondence.
A fantasy novel tells the story of three thieves who inadvertently become advice purveyors after seeking shelter in an abandoned store.
When their car breaks down unexpectedly, three young criminals decide to hide out in a convenience store that has long been out of business. Atsuya, Kohei, and Shota are planning to lie low for a while—at least for the night—but before they can even settle in, an envelope slides through the store’s mail slot. They are immediately suspicious. Who would deliver a missive to a store that hasn’t been open in decades? The letter is from an athlete looking for advice: Should she forgo her Olympic training to take care of her dying boyfriend or push forward to pursue her dream? “As I was struggling on my own with these thoughts, I heard some rumors going around about the Namiya General Store,” she writes. “I know my chances are slim, but I’m writing on the off chance that you might be able to help me figure things out.” The guys discover that the store—when it was in operation—had a reputation for being a place to have questions answered. Kohei, out of boredom, answers the letter and drops it in the mail bin. Almost immediately, he gets a response. The correspondence continues, though the trio can’t tell where the letters are coming from—other than that they seem to be from 30 years in the past. The novel is a bit of a Russian doll, with one layer of narrative opening to reveal the next. Higashino’s (The Name of the Game Is a Kidnapping, 2017, etc.) prose—as translated from the Japanese by Bett (Star, 2019, etc.)—is muscular and concise: “Exiting the station and heading down the street of shops, Kosuke Waku felt an unsettling feeling creep across his chest. He was right. Just as he’d feared, hard times hadn’t spared this town.” More than a time travel mystery, the story is a rather earnest tale of human decision-making, and the author is adept at drawing an emotional response from readers. Inventive and always surprising, this book is easy to get drawn into and difficult to put down.
An endearing tale about a magical correspondence.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-975382-57-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Yen On
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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