A perfect Mobius strip of a novel that playfully examines the creative and destructive potential of language.
A slippery metafictional take on the peril and power of words and how identities fracture and compartmentalize across a lifetime, from one of the most exciting contemporary voices in international literature.
In another masterful translation by Dickson of Øyehaug's wily, mercurial prose, the author-translator team frolics across the multiverse to explore the rifts that open between, most especially, mothers and daughters but also spouses and ex-lovers and between self-perception and how others experience us. Laura, a 24-year-old literature teacher, is pregnant with her first child and increasingly anxious as her due date approaches: about the safety of their fire-trap flat, about fidelity (her own and her husband's), and about "a disconcerting feeling that everything is double." Anna, aged 44, mother of two children—that she knows of—is a writer working on her latest book and perennial obsession, a novel about the origins of language. Though Anna and Laura are unaware of each other’s existence, they are, in fact, mother and daughter. Twenty-two years earlier, Anna sat reading Swedish poetry while supervising 2-year-old Laura pedaling her tricycle in the front yard. When Anna misread the word “trädgård” (garden) as the nonsensical "tärdgård," it opened a parallel universe that Laura vanished into, entirely erased but for Anna's lasting sense that something important is missing, while in Laura's new universe, Anna has never existed at all. At the same time, Anna's husband, Bård, returning from a job in the upper reaches of Norway to escape his attraction to another woman, split in two—one version in each universe—as he bought a newspaper and committed the same misreading. In the present, as Laura prepares for her own daughter's birth, Anna works on her novel, her narrator simultaneously writing the story we ourselves are reading, and navigates a relationship with her teenage daughter, Elina, that seems at times hardly more bridgeable than that with her lost daughter living in an alternate universe. With wry hyperbole, Øyehaug plays out the effects one seemingly inconsequential mistake can have on our relationships, our selves, and the lives of the next generation.
A perfect Mobius strip of a novel that playfully examines the creative and destructive potential of language.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-3742-3717-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© 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.
