A sensitive and moody take on personal connections between loved ones.
In Wald’s novel, the spirit of a recently deceased psychology professor looks back on his life and career, the women he loved, and the tumor that killed him.
When Jack MacLeod died, he “expected to have the mysteries of the universe open up to me like water lilies in the sunlight, but, alas, that isn’t what happened at all.” Despite his demise, he’s still contemplating his life as a 40-ish, bespectacled, unhappily married professor at a New Jersey college. At the end of his time on Earth, he was suffering from a benign but inoperable brain tumor. Stoic and in a somber environment, Jack was always happy to see Eliza, a quiet, determined student.At the same time, his marriage was ending, as his wife, Frances, never thought he was ever rich or successful enough. As Jack deteriorated, he had some regrets: He wished that he’d known his two sons better and that he could have pursued an extramarital affair with Eliza. He also ruminated about Wally Mussel, the despicable head of the psychology department—a grotesque beast of a man who may be blackmailing someone and is likely responsible for worse offenses. His reign of terror also began to directly affect Jack’s life, but he hatched a secret plan with a beloved colleague to expose Mussel for what he was. Wald’s evocative novel manages to deftly capture the mood and myriad voices of the academic world; however, it also narrows its focus to delve deeply into the sensitive mind of its introspective protagonist. Jack is certainly an intelligent, if somewhat sedate, man, and his varied experiences with three different women are depicted out of sequence by a writer who understands timing as much as she does a beautifully crafted sentence. Jack’s life is a serious and pensive one, and it doesn’t end well, but there are flashes of dark humor over the course of the narrative that make it very appealing.
A sensitive and moody take on personal connections between loved ones.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64742-205-9
Page Count: 296
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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