A sumptuous feast for the eyes and the mind.
A Brooklyn-based artist and new mother’s harrowing hike in upstate New York frames a wide-ranging reflection on art and the artist’s life.
In this graphic novel from painter Heffernan, we meet Julie, with infant Sam strapped to her chest, making her way through a lush forest extending to the horizon. The landscape’s myriad greens and multitudinous life awe her and, feeling small under the setting sun, Julie wonders, “What’m I doing here?” The book answers this question in senses big and small, alternating between the increasingly off-course hike and Julie’s background as the youngest member of a conservative religious family, first in small-town Illinois and then in the suburban sprawl of the San Francisco Bay Area. Chronic bed-wetting leads to shame and distressing medical intervention for Julie, anchoring her narration in the corporeal. The female body suffers—when the young Julie squirms under her father’s judging gaze, or when a friend’s excitement at seeing the Beatles provokes savage punishment from the friend’s father for perceived carnality—but is also celebrated, as menstrual rags make their way into fine art, and Sam’s nursing from Julie's hot breasts brings calm to the lost mother. Julie majors in art; travels Europe with a nasty boy; paints in West Berlin with writer Jonathan, her eventual husband and Sam's father; gets a New York agent who screws her over; and rivetingly explains her artistic motivations in stream-of-consciousness narration that is both erudite and amiable. Classic works of art, their secrets deciphered by Julie’s exuberant annotation, punctuate the muted tones and soft lines of the storyline panels, while the author’s own vibrant, ornate paintings occasionally explode the page with fecund portraits of humans and hivelike homes. Heffernan takes her time laying out the narrative threads, then lets them echo through one another, painting the rich web of one woman's life.
A sumptuous feast for the eyes and the mind.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9781643755595
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
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
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