This amusing adventure delivers an enjoyable romp through a bizarre yet familiar landscape.
A debut absurdist novel parodies The Twilight Zone.
The year is 1962. A man in a skinny tie named Ron Sterling is in the Port Authority bus station in Manhattan. Ron is buying a ticket for Binghamton, New York, otherwise known as the “Fifth Most Depressing City in The Country.” Ron Sterling bears a striking similarity to Rod Serling of The Twilight Zone, right down to the Chesterfield he’s smoking. But Ron hosts something called The Detour Dimension. Things seem normal enough until it turns out the bus driver is a “Hot Dog Man” named Frank Weener. When Frank is not driving a bus, he is writing, and he hands a spiral notebook to Ron. Readers are introduced, via Frank’s writings, to The Anarchists. The group, with names like The Crazy Clown, Mr. Dude, and Larry Lutz, is seated at The Pancake House. The members of this crew discuss what they have been up to lately. The Crazy Clown, for instance, plans to park an M41 Walker Bulldog tank in front of a bank and sell Communist-themed ice cream. How does he manage to keep the ice cream cold? He explains to a questioning policeman he does so with “Cold War tactics.” The novel goes back and forth between such outrageous actions, both in Frank’s writing and on Ron’s journey. Mr. Dude teaches a poetry class, though he mainly has his students pretend to be him and take turns overseeing the proceedings. Then there’s action back at The Pancake House, where weird things happen. During a football game, “the Worcester sauce bottle in the middle of their table picks up nothing but John Madden and Pat Summerall.”
When readers first meet Ron and Frank, things are perplexing. While anyone familiar with Rod Serling’s work can easily imagine what Ron must look and sound like, what exactly is a Hot Dog Man and how does he manage to function like a human? In addition, it’s easy to be confused by The Anarchists, who are also called “comedians.” By the time The Crazy Clown talks about his tank, it’s clear that anything may transpire, with or without a satisfactory explanation. Nevertheless, once this tone is established, there is a great deal of humor to be found. In Mr. Dude’s poetry class, one student named Claude Spectrum puts on a drum machine and repeats the word Carbohydrates over and over again. The narrator later informs readers that “Spectrum’s deceptively simple lyric, stapled to an irresistibly militant rhythm…is ridiculously rich with allegorical, elliptical, empirical and erotic suggestion.” It’s a funny scene followed by a hilarious explanation. It’s also exactly the type of thing that might happen on The Twilight Zone if the episode were written by an insane part-human, part-hot dog bus driver. Keay’s book manages such playfulness without the sort of cruel mockery that sometimes surfaces in parodies. As zany as the scenes get, they maintain the feel of a tasteful homage. While not every bit lands as neatly as a Worcester sauce bottle that picks up football commentary, the novel never lets up on the fun.
This amusing adventure delivers an enjoyable romp through a bizarre yet familiar landscape.Pub Date: May 27, 2024
ISBN: 9798350944549
Page Count: 100
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2024
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
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PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
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