A poetic depiction of pain, queerness, Jewishness, and what it is to live.
In the first work of fiction from a poet who illuminates the queer and Jewish experiences, life flashes before the eyes of a nonbinary person who’s lit themself on fire.
It’s not a spoiler to say that poet Sax’s debut novel centers on an act of self-immolation. The novel begins with short descriptions of three smaller encounters with fire, three different burns, labeled first through third degree: a painful childhood accident at the stove, adolescent smoking, a ritual gone horribly wrong. The final section, which comprises the bulk of the novel, is the final degree of burn: immolation. In vignettes that transmute experience in associative fits and starts, as one might cycle through visions at the end of one’s life, the narrator, Ezra, reflects on the world they inhabit as a queer Jewish person: a world that shifts mainly between Yiddishland and a gritty, sometimes ugly, but enchanting New York City. The fragments bounce back and forth in time, as Ezra inhabits the lives of their ancestors in the old country, the moment of their conception, their ambulance trip after their final act, and everywhere in between. Ezra’s musings span not just time and space but a range of topics—from Jewish ancestral legacies to technology and the internet to gender identity to parent-child relationships—and draw upon a deep well of references. The novel is replete with vivid images, the strength of which is rare outside of poetry. Sax has produced a work that is meditative, deeply humane, and profoundly original. Less plot-driven than language-, emotion-, and image-driven—a poet’s novel through and through—the result is a searingly beautiful and devastating foray into fiction.
A poetic depiction of pain, queerness, Jewishness, and what it is to live.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781952119996
Page Count: 285
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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
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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