A multicultural tribute to the New York lockdown experience. Many parts are moving and/or funny; others, easy to skip.
A Decameron-esque storytelling collaboration with a Covid-19 premise.
Thirty-six authors contributed to this lively and predictably somewhat uneven work of fiction sponsored by and benefiting the Authors Guild Foundation, styled as an unclaimed manuscript found in New York’s lost property office. The narrative within is set on the rooftop of a Lower East Side “six-floor walk-up with the farcical name of the Fernsby Arms, a decaying crapshack tenement that should have been torn down long ago,” per the lively frame story penned by Douglas Preston in the persona of Yessenia Grigorescu, the building’s super. From a notebook left by her predecessor in the job, Yessie knows the tenants by evocative sobriquets: The Lady With the Rings, Amnesia, Eurovision, Hello Kitty, the Poet, Vinegar, and so forth. They come up to the roof at 7 p.m. to participate in the huzzah for health care workers, which was a nightly ritual during Manhattan’s lockdown, and then settle into the routine of sharing stories, each written by a different author. One is constantly flipping to the backmatter to see who wrote what; though not all authors are household names, plenty are—Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, Diana Gabaldon, John Grisham, Erica Jong, Tommy Orange, Scott Turow, Luis Alberto Urrea, Meg Wolitzer, and more—though it’s not always the big names who contribute the best work. Fortunately, Preston’s frame story keeps everything moving. Day One gets off to a rollicking start, with stories from Merenguero’s Daughter and The Therapist, actually Maria Hinojosa and Celeste Ng. Anchored in Dominican and Chinese culture, respectively, these stories introduce a theme of diversity that’s one of the joys of the book. There are ghost stories, a war story, many tales of betrayal and revenge, and a report on Shakespeare’s plague experience by scholar James Shapiro. Little to no information is provided about the process behind the book, how contributors were chosen, etc. Since celebrity-watching is part of the draw, that could have been fun.
A multicultural tribute to the New York lockdown experience. Many parts are moving and/or funny; others, easy to skip.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780358616382
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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