An often witty but sometimes uneven collection of tales.
A volume of provocative short stories tackles a wide range of topics.
Provocative is the key word here. Dunlap’s cheeky little fictions are meant to startle, tickle, shock, and, yes, provoke. These tales do not shy away from risqué subject matter. There are the tamer ones, the commentaries on sex and gender. Then there are the stories that up the ante, focusing on incest, suicide, big game hunting, bestiality, and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping (in that tale, the author cleverly asks his readers to think about what happened to the luminary’s other kids). Matching the rhythm of Dunlap’s prose, his stories are often in succinct setup and swift punchline mode. In the slight “Vocabulary Words,” characters try to find a word to convey different experiences of feeling betrayed, finally coming up with stupid. In the following tale, “The Manly Art of Recycling,” a man reminisces about his far-flung experiences before chucking all his recyclable waste into the trash, destined straight for a landfill. At their best, these stories are winking and quippy. But at times, the volume can be a bit pretentious. The author pays a showy homage to Faulkner, for example, by quoting him twice in this collection, once in the epigraph and once at the very end. Dunlap also occasionally writes voices that invoke clichés of Southern poverty. His attempt at Southern Black dialect is even more problematic (The line “I know fo’ sho’ white folks ain’t” feels a little off-putting coming from a White writer). In another tale, two characters come out as transgender but their transitions are done in the service of a joke that they will eventually sleep together. The last piece, the novella Rufus and Sally by the Light of the Moon, also wrestles with gender, with Sally donning men’s clothes for safety in the American West. But she is always an erotic object in the story, which fixates on the “telltale bulge of her hips.”
An often witty but sometimes uneven collection of tales.Pub Date: March 7, 2021
ISBN: 979-8714195297
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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