A precise portrait of sexual enslavement that tends more toward primer than immersive plot.
The experiences of a country girl sold into prostitution in 1903 lay bare the established system and financial exploitation of the Japanese pleasure industry.
Shinonome is known to be the classiest brothel in Kumamoto, on Kyushu Island, and also, as was customary, became the name of the highest-earning, most desirable courtesan among the 80 under its roof. Fifteen-year-old Aoi Ichi has just arrived from a rocky southern island, and she’s placed into Shinonome’s mentorship and service. In debt to the bordello both for the money paid to her father and for everything she wears and consumes on site (at inflated prices), Ichi must learn her trade—to attract and please customers—as thoroughly as possible in order to earn her freedom. Murata, an award-winning Japanese author whose books have never before been translated into English, traces Ichi’s education and training in clear, simple prose, laying out the big picture—practices, punishments, financial underpinnings—and the more quotidian details: depilation, feminine hygiene, etc. Slowly, Ichi is transformed from an ingénue into a skilled escort, though never entirely shedding her bold instincts. Literacy is another important skill, and Ichi attends the Female Industrial School, where Akae Tetsuko, an impoverished woman of good breeding, offers a wider intellectual perspective. Taking on her own clients, Ichi finds continuing support among her peer group. But the brothel is essentially a harsh prison, and some of the girls, including one who fell pregnant, take flight, threatening its discipline. Then Ichi’s father increases her debt burden, and with strikes taking place in Japanese industry and the police changing their policy on enforcing brothel rules, the girls rebel and go on strike themselves. A mass exodus follows, drawing the line under a tale based, unsurprisingly, on true events.
A precise portrait of sexual enslavement that tends more toward primer than immersive plot.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9781640095793
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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