A frequently thrilling, sometimes slow tale that doesn’t shy away from thorny issues.
In this debut literary novel, a diplomat searches for a missing journalist in Africa.
Diplomat Joe Kellerman serves at the American Embassy in Umbika, a fictional country in East Africa undergoing a period of political unrest. He and his co-workers have just learned that they must play host to rabble-rousing American columnist Maurice Hightower, the “most popular black journalist ever.” Hightower has been accusing the current American administration—including Kellerman and his colleagues—of supporting the rebels in Umbika to undermine the country’s “Life President,” strongman J.J. Mulenga. “The rebels steal the food you send, but Umbikans are told it’s the Life President who’s doing it,” claims Hightower after he has landed. “Washington gets high-and-mighty about human rights and says it’s time for the Life President to step down. Tricksters in Washington have done this before. They’ve done it all over the world.” Kellerman is expected to show Hightower around so he can see that nothing is amiss in America’s behavior, but when the journalist takes a side trip on his own and disappears, the diplomat is tasked with finding him. Kellerman’s hunt for the strong-willed man—whose angry claims challenge everything the diplomat believes about Africa and America—turns into a quest to find something even trickier: a deeper understanding of his own presence in Umbika. Elzinga’s economic prose captures the pragmatic, slightly annoyed disposition of Kellerman, the narrator, who regards Umbika with a mix of admiration, frustration, and detachment. Hightower is the diplomat’s perfect foil and succeeds in baiting Kellerman into espousing impatience for ideas of systemic racism: “ ‘I’ve read your column,’ I said, feeling free to say anything on my mind. ‘I know what you think about white people. I know why you’re here.’ ‘Then you know I didn’t come here to find white folks to argue with. I came here to find the truth.’ ‘The truth? Ha. Slavery ended a hundred years ago. That’s the truth.’ ” Kellerman’s responsibilities as a foreign service officer—enumerated in great detail—are both grounding and immersive. The book has its lulls, but it represents an intriguing and often exciting update on the diplomatic novels of the 20th century.
A frequently thrilling, sometimes slow tale that doesn’t shy away from thorny issues.Pub Date: May 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9992194-7-8
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Water's Edge Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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