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DIS//INTEGRATION

2 NOVELAS & 3 STORIES & A LITTLE PLAY

There’s cleverness and craft in abundance here. Also, wisdom and even warmth.

A posthumously published work by a major (if unsung) Black novelist reminds readers of his imaginative brio, verbal ingenuity, and abrasive wit.

In a present day when innovative fiction by African American writers is finding greater acclaim, it’s appropriate that Kelley, who died in 2017 at age 79, should emerge from the relative shadows of cult heroism with this previously unpublished novel. The self-described “2 Novelas & 3 Stories & a Little Play” constituting Dis//Integration make up a shapeshifting biography of Charles “Chig” Dunford, a quasi-autobiographical character who previously appeared in Kelley’s short story collection Dancers on the Shore (1964) and in his novel Dunfords Travels Everywheres (1970). Chig, a highly educated writer and academic, seems to live his life in dreamlike phases, beginning in 1952 when, at 17, he travels south to meet his grandmother Nanny Eva, who enlightens him about the fate of women in the world. Twelve years later, Chig’s in Reupeo (an anagram of Europe), where he becomes protégé to a Hemingway-esque American expatriate writer named John Hoenir, who offers counsel on writing, living, and even sparring. (“You can only go to Heaven if you die fighting. An ambush don’t count.”) The narrative shifts to the “little play” form but not without a short introduction, described as a “dream” and written in a kind of Joycean patois Kelley has deployed in earlier novels. The dramatic narrative that follows seems surreal, too; it takes place in 1965 on a passenger ship where Chig meets and falls in love with Wendy, an enigmatic Black actress passing for white, who breaks his heart, but not before telling him about a hundred Africans chained together in the ship’s lower hold. Mutineers or…slaves? Nobody seems to know. Eventually both the narrative and Chig settle in Vermont, where he teaches English at a small college; looks after Merry, his teenage niece; meets Renka Bravo, a captivating, raven-haired dancer whose cosmopolitan smarts seem to be luring him from lifelong bachelorhood; and engages in some genteel but barbed sparring with Raymond Winograd, his department chair. There’s no use in trying to fashion any kind of logical narrative from these interludes. All you can do is marvel at Kelley’s arresting collagelike portrait of the artist as an intellectual nomad, clinging to the core of what makes him human—and humane.

There’s cleverness and craft in abundance here. Also, wisdom and even warmth.

Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024

ISBN: 9780593469934

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Vintage

Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024

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BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL

A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.

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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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THE WEDDING PEOPLE

Uneven but fitfully amusing.

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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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