A resplendent and fearless book. Must read.
A queer Korean American artist interrogates the legacy and aftermath of Whiteness in the form of beauty, suffering, desire, and the complex interchange of power in this autofictive roman à clef.
The narrator of this lush and brutal novel is a study in dualities. Her father is Korean and abandons the family when she is around 10; her mother is White and loves her in a narcissistic, abusive way. Moreover, the narrator is a painter whose career centers in both the sweltering sunshine of Los Angeles and the eternal nocturne of Berlin, a figurative artist whose work underscores the complex interdependence of beauty, race, and power even as it nods to Western art’s tradition of “painting beautiful white women, the kind who always had more money, beauty and power than the painter”; and she is a queer woman with a submission kink whose “fetish for giving away…power [is] actually about controlling it.” After a period of relative stasis in her career, the narrator has two important solo shows lined up but finds herself without inspiration. Her search for a muse leads to Hanne, an LA art-world siren who initially attracts her with the proud, heedless power of her beauty and quickly becomes the focal point not only for the narrator's art, but also for the dynamic conflict between the narrator's own ideas about Whiteness—how it is “hard to paint precisely because it’s everywhere and in everything.…It’s the image of the world. And yet no one can see it for itself because there’s no such thing as an ipseity of white…”—and desire, where it comes from and who controls both its expression and its repercussions. The paintings of Hanne result in the narrator's first sold-out show, but just as she is poised to capitalize on that success, an influential Black performance artist publishes a petition calling for all artists of color to boycott museums and galleries with operating budgets over $1 million for their imperialist and racist exploitation of those artists, with the narrator's upcoming venues among them. Conflicted over the opposing impulses of her desire for recognition and solidarity, economic success and artistic authenticity, excellence and anonymity, the narrator spends a long, dark night of the soul spiraling around the splendor of self-destruction like a moth to a singular flame. Impassioned, wry, compassionate, and hell-raising, this novel illuminates its frangible but resilient world the way a painter uses color on canvas to illuminate the focal point of her vision—building layer after layer of meaning until the image appears as if it has always been there for us to see.
A resplendent and fearless book. Must read.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781913505660
Page Count: 320
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© 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.
