The warmth and humanity of Goldman's storytelling are impossible to resist.
During a five-day visit to his hometown of Boston, a writer attempts to fit together the pieces of his own past, his mother's, and that of her native Guatemala.
"I wish I could remember every single second of my entire life so far, in full 3-D Technicolor and surround sound, and at every past scene re-inhabit myself exactly as I was." This is the yearning of Francisco Goldberg, Goldman's fictional alter ego in an autobiographical novel that touches on some of the same ground as his magical, prizewinning debut, The Long Night of White Chickens (1992). Frankie, as he was called in his youth (along with Monkey Boy and other unpleasantries), has returned to Boston to have dinner with a high school girlfriend, occasioning an avalanche of memories of his classmates' racism, his father's violence, and his breach with his only sister but also sweeter recollections of his relationships with the series of young Guatemalan women who were sent by his Abuelita to help his mother around the house. He arranges to meet with two of them and pays several visits to his mother at her nursing home, a tin of her favorite French butter cookies in hand. They play a very lenient bilingual version of Scrabble as he wheedles out long-missing details about her ancestry, her marriage, other men in her past. His Mamita may not have the memory she once did, but that's not the only reason she hesitates. She's read that first novel of his, too. "This is why I never want to tell you anything, because you take just a little thread of truth and pull on it and out comes a made-up story." Goldman's—or Goldberg's?—immersive, restless narrative style expertly plays the rhythms of thought and remembrance, weaving in his past and current romances, his investigation of and published work on Guatemalan terror, ultimately the quest for a whole made of so many halves: half Jewish, half Catholic, half American, half Guatemalan, half White, half Latino....
The warmth and humanity of Goldman's storytelling are impossible to resist.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8021-5767-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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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