An uncommon, unconventional reflection on the truths and deceptions we unveil in our youth.
A young person’s Catcher in the Rye–like ramble through Barcelona.
An obscure science-fiction author, a Spanish poet, and the heady confusion and poor decision-making of adolescence figure prominently in this unpredictable novel by Spanish writer Calvo, translated by Lethem. As in Salinger’s angst-y masterpiece, the protagonist, Pol, is a teenager who's been labeled mentally ill, has an adult mindset despite protestations to the contrary, and is prone to the influences of music, drugs, and yearning. We meet him during a court-mandated visit to Dr. Buenanueva, a requirement imposed after he has a fit while being abused by classical mean girl Guiomar Galbán and stabs her in the neck with a fork. Pol’s diagnosis is schizophrenia, which certainly lends him credibility as an unreliable narrator. There’s not much in the way of a plot, though nominally it's a coming-of-age story. Pol is obsessed with an obscure but influential SF/fantasy writer named Cooper Crowe (who seems like a doppelgänger for Tolkien but is tipped in the acknowledgements as having been based on Michael Moorcock). He inevitably encounters a goth, moody, and antagonistic girl named Bronwyn Ruiz, who will only be in his life for a couple of months but, as happens, will mark him forever. Pol sees the world in the vernacular of myth: He is the iconic “holy fool”; his sister, Oli, the reluctant accessory; his mother the absentee queen of the familial kingdom; and Bronwyn the girl who will never love you but you break yourself on anyway. Pol is telling us this story six years later, but, like many things that happen at that age, it might as well be yesterday.
An uncommon, unconventional reflection on the truths and deceptions we unveil in our youth.Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953862-04-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: ANTIBOOKCLUB
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 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
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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