This well-told tale with rich prose and relatable characters is a good primer on Ukraine.
Two Ukrainians struggle against the backdrop of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Even after the USSR craters, Ivan fears that spies lurk behind him. “Don’t look for shadows behind your back,” a friend likes to say. Ivan and Phoebe fall briefly in love, if that’s what you can call it, and marry. Ivan is reluctant about the match to start with, but he gives in to family and social pressures. It’s a mistake from the get-go. Phoebe’s real name is Maria, but her chosen name alludes to Phoebus, the Greek god of poetry. Before the marriage, she’d lent Ivan a floppy disk with all her poems, which he neither cares about nor ever returns. Perhaps he sees in her poetry the key to Phoebe’s developing into her own person, which would endanger his dreams. He will provide for them—he has a plan. Phoebe becomes pregnant with Emilia, whom they both love, but Ivan refuses to allow her to do anything but stay home with in-laws who can’t stand her. She gets clear second billing both in this novel and in life—Ivan dreams of a better future for himself but prohibits Phoebe from pursuing her love of poetry. In the story’s most telling line, “he shared his parenthood with Phoebe—Phoebe about whom he could not imagine talking to anyone at all.” So while she's stuck at home, Ivan goes out into the local world trying to find a decent job. Meanwhile, Ivan laments his lack of control over life after communism. He and Phoebe played bit parts in the political upheaval and struggle for democracy but remain far removed from influence over Ukraine’s future. Yes, they’d once been part of history, two people among thousands protesting in the Maidan, Lviv’s main square. Ivan feels that but for the protests by him and his comrades in arms, the Soviet Union would still be “alive and well.” But now what? Both husband and wife are trapped in a societal collapse and its painful rebirth, and they don’t even have each other for solace.
This well-told tale with rich prose and relatable characters is a good primer on Ukraine.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9781646052622
Page Count: 425
Publisher: Deep Vellum
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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 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
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PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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