A distinctive, fragmentary story of an artist’s painful coming of age.
A troubled screenwriter reflects on his origins in Gaiter’s literary novel.
Louisiana-born, Harvard-educated Jessie Vincent Grandier III comes to Los Angeles to break into screenwriting. It’s something of an adjustment; Jessie has been raised mostly among the white people on his Black father’s military bases and the upper-class, light-skinned Blacks of his Creole mother’s New Orleans family. Staying with relatives in South LA, he’s exposed to an entirely new Black community—and the culture shock is profound. Just as discombobulating is the realization that Hollywood is not filled with the semioticians of his Ivy League film classes but with businessmen who place little value on art or imagination. When he loses his job as a script reader at a television network, Jessie begins a slide into alcoholism and bitterness. As he does, his memory travels to his childhood as a military brat, the lone boy in a family of five; his failures to live up to his violent father’s standards of masculinity; his attempts, in high school and college, to excel beyond other people’s racist expectations; his relationship with his now-deceased mother, Lulene; his love of music; and the complex emotions he has regarding his own identity as a gay man. Is it too late to become the person Jessie has always wanted to be? Perhaps he is destined to become as embittered and uptight as the man he’s never wanted to emulate: his father. Gaiter’s lively prose presses against the confines of every sentence: “In case you hadn’t noticed,” he addresses the reader midway through, “somewhere along the line, between the vicious, whip-wielding nuns, and Grandier’s military fist, Jessie had developed an aversion to authority, being told what to do, and having others’ assumptions thrust upon him.” The book’s real pleasure is in this dynamic voice rather than the plot, which doesn’t develop so much as accumulate through a series of flashbacks. The text includes occasional news articles, poems, and photographs; together, these shards memorably tell the story of a man attempting to assemble the ill-fitting pieces of a life.
A distinctive, fragmentary story of an artist’s painful coming of age.Pub Date: June 24, 2024
ISBN: 9798990289901
Page Count: 337
Publisher: Legba Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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