A powerful novel—heartbreaking, magical, and real.
A young girl becomes a refugee in her own land in this fairy tale–adjacent bildungsroman.
When war comes to the small, idiosyncratic country of Elysia, no one is quite surprised, but neither are they prepared. For Sofia Bottom-Zier, the pampered young daughter of Elysian’s leading intellectual, the time between the Enemy’s invasion of their country’s borders and their inevitable march on the Capital has been a pleasurable interlude of intrigue, drama, and a renewed closeness to her difficult and mercurial mother, Clara. This comes to an end when the Enemy announces that they will allow all Elysian children safe passage out of the Capital on a special train, and Clara hastens to make sure Sofia is on it. Sofia’s safety is not Clara’s primary concern, however. Her much larger goal is to smuggle out the manuscript she has written and concealed inside Sofia’s suitcase, which she hopes will convey to the Western world that the country of Elysia is worth saving. “Of course the book is more important than you,” Clara tells her daughter. “It’s my memoir, yes. But it’s more important than me. It’s the celebration of an Elysian life. What are any of us except expendable during a war? It’s the idea of freedom that has to be saved.” With that admonition ringing in her ears, Sofia boards the Children’s Train heading toward the vague safety of “the countryside.” It soon becomes clear, however, that the Enemy has no intention of rescuing the children, and is instead shipping them to their executions. Sofia escapes, but in the commotion, she loses track of the suitcase with her mother’s manuscript inside. Accompanied by the Goose, a “public intellectual” who is also an actual goose with big dreams of a future in the Capital, Sofia sets off across the war-torn landscape of her erstwhile country in search of the Black Market—a near-mythical place where everything “illegal and forbidden and delightful ended up,” including, Sofia hopes, her mother’s manuscript, and the country’s potential salvation. The novel is told in fairy tale cadence and peppered with sophisticated animals, sensitive objects, and the enduring magic of folklore forests; its raw power lies in the way it blends the realities of war with the equally trenchant realities of its child narrator’s perspective as she navigates her suddenly irredeemable world.
A powerful novel—heartbreaking, magical, and real.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063425996
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.
A woman faces a health crisis and obsesses over a local accident in this wonderful follow-up to Sandwich (2024).
Newman begins her latest with a quote from Nora Ephron: “Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know—it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.” It sets an appropriate tone for a story that is just as full of death and dread as it is laughter. Two years after the events of Sandwich, Rocky is back home in Western Massachusetts and happily surrounded by family—her daughter, Willa, lives with her and her husband, Nick, while applying to Ph.D. programs; her widowed father, Mort, has moved into the in-law apartment behind their house. When a young man who graduated from high school with Rocky’s son, Jamie, is hit by a train, Rocky finds herself spiraling as she thinks about how close the tragedy came to her own family. She’s also freaking out about a mysterious rash her dermatologist can’t explain. Both instances are tailor-made for internet research and stalking. As Rocky obsessively googles her symptoms and finds only bad news (“Here’s what’s true about the Internet: very infrequently do people log on with their good news. Gosh, they don’t write, I had this weird rash on my forearm? And it turned out to be completely nothing!”), she also compulsively checks the Facebook page of the accident victim’s mother. Newman excels at showing how sorrow and joy coexist in everyday life. She masterfully balances a modern exploration of grief with truly laugh-out-loud lines (one passage about the absurdity of collecting a stool sample and delivering it to the doctor stands out). As Rocky deals with the byzantine frustrations of the medical system, she also has to learn, once more, how to see her children, husband, father, and herself as fully flawed and lovable humans.
A heartbreaking, laugh-provoking, and absolutely Ephron-esque look at the beauty and fragility of everyday life.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063453913
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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