An absorbing novel by a wise and graceful writer.
In Perlstein’s novel, a bereft man, after the death of his wife of 46 years, examines his life with an aim of becoming “another version” of himself.
Steve Goldman has had an undeniably successful life in many ways. He’s a former officer at a San Francisco bank who’s found time to indulge his passion for fiction writing over the years; he knows he’ll never be as talented as Bernard Malamud or Philip Roth, but he’s content with that. Now he’s a retired widower who’s feeling his own mortality. One day, he sits down at the kitchen table and creates a life ledger of sorts, focusing mostly on his relationships with lifelong friends and thinking about when he’s been a “mensch” and when he’s been a “schmuck.” His greatest touchstones are three people he’s known since they attended junior high in Queens—Arnie Lieberman, Jeffrey Shiffrin, and Gary Weisbrod—all of whom he considers blood brothers. They’ve stayed in touch, or at least their paths have occasionally crossed, over the decades. Toward the very end of the novel, Steve offers an account of how the four took a train trip up the California coast for old times’ sake. The trip was instigated by Jeffrey, who was dying. They were all successful in their careers—Jeffrey, a lawyer; Gary, a wildly popular artist and genius self-promoter; and Arnie, an advertising agency art director-turned-painter. Arnie never forgave Steve for jilting his sister, Joyce, so many years ago; also, Steve feels that Jeffrey treated him and his wife, Evelyn, badly in the settling of her late father’s estate. All these people, and others, find their place in Steve’s ledger.
Perlstein, like his protagonist, lives in San Francisco and is a prolific and successful writer in his own right. That he writes well is hardly surprising. Steve's voice is delightful: self-regarding, conversational, honest, and witty (“I was determined to hold my ground rather than be shoveled into it”). Steve is a man who, whenever he lets himself off the hook, immediately realizes it and backtracks. Early on, he takes a walk in Golden Gate Park to clear his head and finds a split-open suitcase in the bushes; from this find, he concocts a wonderful (and sad) domestic story, establishing his writing credentials. He tells many other stories along the way, such as that of his flamboyant Uncle Max, who crossed the mob and had secrets. An account of Gary’s art installation, which has a comeuppance along the lines of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” is priceless—and it also happens to dovetail with when Steve met Evelyn. Through it all, a tortured Steve issues dicta such as “I found myself powerless to keep self-justification from duking it out with guilt.” Steve eventually realizes that his ledger may not be the salvation he’d hoped for, since life is much too messy and accounting is for CPAs. But all this reflection, all this revisiting, certainly helps him get through a very tough couple of days.
An absorbing novel by a wise and graceful writer.Pub Date: April 5, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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.
