A tiny, shocking book about despair and its haunting consequences.
A pregnant woman and her ailing father try to carve out the rest of their lives in a village in Uruguay.
No lie, this book is emotionally challenging and often depressing. Brief, bleak, and often shockingly claustrophobic, the novel chronicles the life of Clara, our narrator and something of a cipher, who is trapped in a small home with her father, who is suffering from some kind of debilitating neurological illness. To add to Clara’s litany of troubles—which include rapidly diminishing funds and something resembling grief over the accidental death of someone named Julia, never quite identified as to her role in the family—she's several months pregnant as well. Other than the birth of Flor, her daughter, and Clara’s general ambivalence about the child’s welfare, there’s no drama there since both the father and the circumstances of Flor’s conception are patently ignored. Because the family has retreated inside, Clara’s only real relief is ruminating on her rooftop during the rare moments she’s not responsible for her Dad’s or Flor’s well-beings. “I don’t know when everything started to go wrong, or what set the end in motion,” Clara tells us. “If I’m remembering all this tonight, it’s only because I want a little more time with them. No one could possibly understand how I feel: isolated, expecting nothing, knowing I’m locked in a desperate battle to defend something that’s already gone.” The only other character supporting this triptych of misanthropes is Carmen Diviak, a neighbor and something of a midwife who helps Clara give birth and keep her family alive, for now. At its core, it’s a story about being trapped and the fear, isolation, and anxiety that emerge when one is stuck in a dark, dark place.
A tiny, shocking book about despair and its haunting consequences.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-913867-04-1
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Charco Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
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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