A uniquely interesting and enlightening reading experience.
The only short story ever written by the Nobel Prize–winning Morrison is also a thought experiment, illuminated here by Zadie Smith's close analysis of equal length.
Twyla and Roberta are both 8 years old when they meet at a New York state institution where they are briefly housed—because, as Twyla tells us in the first sentence, “My mother danced all night and [Roberta’s] was sick.” They connect immediately despite the fact that “we looked like salt and pepper standing there and that’s what the other kids called us sometimes.” The girls run into each other several times later in life but never recapture their childhood connection. Among the wedges between them are their differing memories of an incident they witnessed involving a bow-legged “kitchen woman” named Maggie. Now, listen up: If you only remember one thing about this review, remember to skip over the 50-page introduction and read the 50-page story first. Just as students read the text before they hear the lecture, Smith's exegesis is much more meaningful if you know the story. If you read the intro first, you forfeit the ability to apprehend the story on your own, more critical than usual here since the issue goes beyond spoilers. According to Morrison herself, this story is “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.” And as Smith adds, the “subject of the experiment is the reader.” On every page, Morrison teases said reader with details about the girls, their mothers, and their lots in life that seem like they could help solve the puzzle of which is Black and which is White, yet they never conclusively do so. And as the story is designed to show and Smith will make sure you see, that is not the most important thing.
A uniquely interesting and enlightening reading experience.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-31503-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
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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
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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
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