A gentle story of survival in a war-scarred land.
A Ukrainian beekeeper strives in the face of hardship to make the most of his simple life.
Until it was thrust into the headlines by Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine was far from the minds of most Western readers. Through the story of Sergey Sergeyich, a divorced, disabled Ukrainian mine safety inspector and passionate beekeeper, Kurkov transforms the abstractions of geopolitics into an intensely human account of compassion and persistence. Along with Pashka, his lifelong frenemy, Sergeyich is one of the two remaining inhabitants of Little Starhorodivka, a village in Ukraine’s “Grey Zone”—the front line between the nation’s troops and pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region. The village, so small it has only two main streets whose names Sergeyich decides to reverse in a moment of whimsy, has been without electricity for three years. Through a harsh winter, as the sounds of distant shelling periodically shatter the silence, Sergeyich survives on a diet of buckwheat, millet, and the occasional egg, heating his home with a coal-fired potbelly stove and lighting it with candles scavenged from the ruins of the village’s bombed-out church. Pashka has secured for himself a marginally more comfortable lifestyle due to his friendship with the separatist forces. With the onset of warmer weather, Sergeyich impulsively decamps with his six beehives on an odyssey across a war-ravaged landscape that will eventually bring him to the Crimean home of Akhtem, a Tatar beekeeper he met at a convention years earlier. But when he arrives, he finds himself more connected to Akhtem’s family than he ever anticipated, in the process discovering a common humanity that transcends borders and faiths. Kurkov’s prose is as unassuming as his characters. In his portrayal, Sergeyich is an Everyman embroiled against his will in “a war in which he [has] taken no part.” The humble pleasure he derives from tending to his bees and his determination simply to endure another difficult day make for a subtly inspirational tale.
A gentle story of survival in a war-scarred land.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-646051-66-3
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Deep Vellum
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
Jewell is absolutely a genius at building suspense, but the “man behaving badly” plot is getting tired.
Following her father’s sudden death, Aisling Swann is secretly horrified when her mother begins to date again—and she quickly becomes suspicious of this new flame.
Four years ago: A mysterious male narrator reflects upon his relationship with his wife—along with a few pointed comments about how she is aging. It quickly becomes apparent that this self-proclaimed “very pleasant” man is not who he seems; he already has a girlfriend on the side, and he’s playing both women with sob stories about his job and his traumatic past while taking money from them. Even as they get more and more frustrated with his lack of communication during ever-lengthening absences, he still gives them what they want: “a top-notch husband.” In the present day, Ash Swann; her brother, Arlo; and their mother, Nina, mourn the loss of her charismatic father, Paddy, a successful chef with a chain of lucrative restaurants. Nina receives a sympathy note from a man who claims to have worked closely with Paddy in the industry, which leads to a robust online flirtation that moves into the real world about a year after her husband’s death. Ash is living at home, mired in grief as well as her own mental health struggles, and she’s none too happy to see her mom dating—but particularly this handsome, egregiously suave Nick Radcliffe. Ash begins to notice some inconsistencies with his stories and his past, so she enlists Paddy’s ex-girlfriend Jane to help her investigate. Meanwhile, Ash’s story continues to intercut that of the mysterious man who is now married to his former girlfriend—and still up to his old tricks. Jewell’s cutting between past and present certainly allows revelations to ooze out at a slow, controlled pace; even as the reader makes obvious connections, the full picture remains obscure. Jewell has written some incredibly engaging and strong female characters, Nina, Ash, and Jane foremost among them. What would it have been like to split the narrative between them instead of giving so much voice—and thus narrative power—to the male antagonist?
Jewell is absolutely a genius at building suspense, but the “man behaving badly” plot is getting tired.Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9781668033876
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
