Could this be a made-for-gifting book created to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Clarke’s phenomenal debut?
A much-loved author shares a tale for Christmastime.
In an afterword, Clarke tells readers how this story began as a BBC Radio 4 broadcast. Or, rather, she explains how her father’s neurodivergence, her beliefs about the consciousness of trees, and the music of Kate Bush begat a tale in which a young woman sees her future during a walk in a snowy forest. The author also explains how she was certain that Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004) contained a footnote describing the city where her protagonist lives, but that it’s gone now—probably removed by a fairy “for reasons of his or her own.” It’s laudable that Clarke wants her readers to experience the narrative without preamble, but this backstory reveals her charms as a writer in a way that the story itself does not. Our heroine, Merowdis Scot, feels most at home in the woods and most herself in the company of animals. Even her sister, Ysolde—who comes closer than anyone to understanding her—is no substitute for Merowdis’ pig, her dogs, her many cats, or the spiders that weave their webs undisturbed in her room. Merowdis is taking a winter walk in the company of a trio of her four-legged companions when she encounters a fox and a blackbird and tells the wood of her desire for a child—a “midwinter child…A child to bring light into the darkness.” Given that Merowdis can’t imagine marrying and, given her ease with animals and unease around people, her wish will require a miracle that’s very different from the miracle found in the Christmas story. Once Merowdis sees her fate, this tale takes on some of the uncanny truth of folklore. Getting to this point, though, means connecting with an “unconventional” heroine who is both familiar and unexceptional in both children’s lit and books for grownups.
Could this be a made-for-gifting book created to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Clarke’s phenomenal debut?Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781639734481
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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