An ambitious, quirky, time-folding yarn.
A clinic invites Europeans to live in the past, with all the comforts and perils that doing so brings.
The unnamed narrator of Bulgarian author Gospodinov’s third novel translated into English has stumbled into the orbit of Gaustine, who’s opened a facility in Zurich for people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia—“those who already are living solely in the present of their past,” as he puts it. Memory care is a legitimate treatment for such patients, but Gospodinov’s digressive, philosophical novel is less a work of realist literature than an allegory about the perils of looking backward and attempting to make Switzerland (or Sweden or Germany...) great again. As the popularity of the clinic expands—with different floors dedicated to different decades of the 20th century—the narrator alternates between sketches of various patients and ruminations about modern European history (particularly that of his native Bulgaria) and how time is treated by authors like Thomas Mann, W.H. Auden, and Homer. Eventually, the novel expands into a kind of dark satire of nostalgia and patriotism as more clinics emerge and various European countries hold referendums to decide which point in time it wishes to live in. (France picks the 1980s; Switzerland, forever neutral, votes to live in the day of the referendum.) But, of course, attempting to live in the past doesn’t mean you can stay there. Though the story at times meanders, translator Rodel keeps the narrator’s wry voice consistent. And in its brisker latter chapters, the story achieves a pleasurably Borges-ian strangeness while sending a warning signal about how memory can be glitch-y and dangerous. As Gaustine puts it: “The more a society forgets, the more someone produces, sells, and fills the freed-up niches with ersatz-memory.”
An ambitious, quirky, time-folding yarn.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-09095-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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