Fiction that explores not only what it means, but why it matters.
An allegorical novella challenges readers to connect the dots and fill in the blanks.
Though the narrative is short, there is plenty to unpack here as the Mexican-born avant-gardist Bellatin conjures an imaginary Japan where convention is under challenge. Institutions seem to be crumbling beneath their smooth surfaces, and marriage is one of them. Mrs. Murakami has all but lost her identity and personality after marriage, with most of the story detailing her formative years as the schoolgirl Izu. She was bright and independent, constricted by the customs concerning single women, beset by her father’s health and legal issues. As an art student, she finds herself unwittingly in conspiracy with a charismatic professor and the editor of an influential magazine. The professor assigns her to write an analysis of Mr. Murakami’s art collection, which turns out to be a somewhat disparaging appraisal, and the magazine’s director wants to publish it. “ ‘Finally, someone dared to unmask a fraud whose collection rests on obsolete criteria,’ ” the director says. Yet her visit with Mr. Murakami had left him smitten, and despite a chill in the relationship after her piece was published, they married. Even so, his collection had been discredited, and there were rumors of scandal, that he was connected to “a criminal network that purchased used underwear from students at various all-girls schools and sold them to wealthy men.” In marriage, the two seem to know little about each other and care less. His death leaves his wife all but destitute, though she still has her garden, which he continues to haunt. Following the frequently footnoted narrative, the text concludes with an addenda of 24 numbered items, questions, and considerations for the reader, including a potential plot twist that suggests that “the true motivations of the story’s protagonists will never be known.” Bellatin is a playful novelist who isn't trying to hold the mirror to reality, provide allegory or philosophy or life lessons, and reading this provocative novella makes one consider all sorts of assumptions about "why read?" and "why write?"
Fiction that explores not only what it means, but why it matters.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64605-029-1
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Deep Vellum
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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