Rambunctious from the get-go, this zany tale still has plenty of lessons to teach.
A debut road novel offers a coming-of-age tale.
It is August 1999, and 21-year-old Chaz Chase is on the road. With his 1959 Cadillac convertible he calls Pam Grier, a fedora, and a trunkload of unwanted screenplays (among other items), he calls the American highway home. His sidekick is a talking pit bull (only Chaz can hear him) named Max. Max was a Hollywood director in a previous life, and he loves to expound on the cinema of old (The Lady From Shanghai is just one of the many black-and-white movies mentioned). While on the road, man and dog talk about films and life and trade friendly insults (Max tells Chaz: “You sing as well as you write,” and he doesn’t mean that as a compliment). Where exactly are they headed? As Chaz explains at one point, he is “just wandering around trying to find myself. But I’m proving to be very illusive.” Chaz is also “processing” his divorce and coming to terms with a number of issues from his past. He reflects on things like how he used to set things on fire and his outlandish valedictorian speech. In this process of finding himself, Chaz also discovers a girl named Clitty. Clitty is just as outrageous as her name would suggest. The two form quite a pair, but is she the one Chaz is looking for? How will she react when he explains the true, darker reason he has embraced a nomadic lifestyle?
A story starring a young man with a fedora, a chatty dog, and an affection for a girl named Clitty has all the makings of a bonkers adventure. This is exactly what Kline’s narrative proves to be. The pages overflow with one-liners and silly wordplay. When Chaz spies a “No Cow Tipping!” sign, he wonders: “How much do you tip a cow? Twenty percent?” There are gags about turds, piss, and a man with three testicles. Things are made more absurd when the first-person narrative occasionally gives way to a screenplay format. Though the humor may not always prove to be sidesplitting, the mood is kept light enough for readers to take an interest in this oddball hero. But the book is at its best when venturing into more earnest material. At one point, Chaz makes a trip to visit his aging father in Santa Cruz, California. As much as the scene could be played for laughs, it is striking to see their strained relationship in action. Ultimately, underneath the fedora is a man trying to find his place in a tough world. And as much as the story talks about dog pee and Max’s advice to “Grab life by the throat and spit in its face,” the final pages end on a serious, if completely wacky, note about the precious, ephemeral nature of existence. It turns out a goofy fellow and his talking pooch provide as good a reason as any to consider what it means to be alive.
Rambunctious from the get-go, this zany tale still has plenty of lessons to teach. (appendix)Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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