An economical, elliptical, but always entertaining novel of transformation by a highly skilled enigmatist.
Does the onstage crisis afflicting a famous musician denote an end or a beginning?
Celebrated 34-year-old concert pianist Elsa M. Anderson has “a double following [her] around the world.” First glimpsed in Athens buying toy horses, then in London, then Paris, the nameless woman seems to be in dialogue with Elsa, inside her head. Elsa has also stolen the doppelgänger’s hat. This first enigmatic note is soon joined by others, echoing and overlapping through the new novel by esteemed British writer Levy, which has introduced Elsa at a point of professional upheaval. Midway through her most recent concert, playing Rachmaninov in Vienna, she messed up and walked off the stage. Now, choosing to give music lessons to teenagers, Elsa spends time on a Greek island, then in Paris, returns home to London, and eventually travels to Sardinia, to the home of her adopted father, Arthur Goldstein, who may be dying. Elsa, who feels herself to be porous, unraveling, has a complicated heritage. Referred to as Ann, she was the ward of foster parents till age 6, then was “gifted” to Goldstein, who took the infant prodigy into his care and tutelage and renamed her. Now an adult, but with “no lovers. No children,” she is preoccupied by thoughts of suicide and increasingly of her mother. Slowly, while invoking a welter of European cultural icons, Levy pulls tighter her characteristic threads of identity, perspective, and parenting, intensifying Elsa’s experiences with friends, music, and various abusive men while constantly questioning herself: “Maybe I am.” Who is she really, what is the significance of the toy horses and of her blue hair are among the many questions in this short, teasing novel, which enlarges the possibility of answers when Elsa and her double meet at last, back in Paris.
An economical, elliptical, but always entertaining novel of transformation by a highly skilled enigmatist.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780374602048
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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
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
© 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.
