This creepy tale must be making a point about antisemitism, but the SF elements complicate it beyond clear translation.
After the state of Israel disappears into a black hole, antisemitism becomes the law of the land.
As Resnick’s disturbing debut opens, Ethan and Ella—a tech journalist and a photographer—bond over the joy of launching a paper airplane from the rooftop deck of their co-working space. That might sound like a meet-cute, but this dark dystopian drama is no romantic comedy. The connection between the two characters, both Jewish, she the single mother of a 6-year-old named Michael, is forged in a climate of worldwide dread, in a city filled with random violence and robotic killer dogs. Ella lives in a part of the city called the Pale, which will soon become the only neighborhood in which Jews can live; this is one of myriad allusions to the years leading up to the Holocaust in Europe. After the First Event (the disappearance of Israel) and the Second Event (numerous similar “anomalies” tear the fabric of reality in cities around the world), many people believe that Jews are in on this situation or benefiting from it in some way; this unleashes further individual and state-sponsored acts of antisemitism. Meanwhile, it’s true that the anomalies are portals that exert a gravitational force only on Jews, who can step through to be transported to a mysterious parallel world. The portrayal of Jews in the book will not be comfortable for all readers. For example, the characters seem to agree that you can always identify a Jewish person just by looking at them; if this point is being held up to scrutiny rather than asserted as fact, that is not clear. The implications of the title, too, are discomfiting. Is Resnick, a rabbi in Pelham, New York, suggesting that this type of deep division between the Jews and everyone else is the “next stop”? Of what?
This creepy tale must be making a point about antisemitism, but the SF elements complicate it beyond clear translation.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781668066638
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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