A dark but charming portrait of a man unmoored by his love of an artist.
Japanese novelist Tawada, who lives in Berlin, observes a scholar’s obsession with a poet.
When does an interest become an obsession? A pathology? For the central character of Tawada’s Covid-19-era novella, problems come to light after his interest becomes a job. Patrik—more often referred to as “the patient”—is a literature scholar in the midst of a mental breakdown. The object of Patrik’s work, and of his obsession, is the 20th-century Romania-born Jewish poet Paul Celan (1920-1970). In his thoughts and conversations, Patrik references endless minutiae of the poet’s work, including his preoccupations with Zen and Kabbalah. For Patrik, Celan takes on a similar mystical significance—no detail small enough to escape notice, nothing in life too mundane to connect back to his work. Patrik aspires to “give a lecture in which he revealed the significance of every single letter Celan used in his poetry,” but he’s hobbled by his mental illness, which largely prevents him from leaving home. When he does, the patient suffers absurd compulsions, such as an inability to turn right at intersections or to order at a café. After a server offers a drink, he complains: “Why grapefruit juice? The grapefruit available in Berlin is mostly imported from Israel. Celan didn’t go to Israel until 1969.” Although he insists that “Patrik is different from the patient,” the line between them is undefined. The narrative embodies his alienation by fluctuating between first and third person and traversing fragmented timelines. What results is an inventive homage to modernist literature, wrapped up in an unexpectedly personal depiction of illness. Although the patient’s problems appear to be psychological, they manifest in his physicality: “I ought to leave my body to its own devices, it can lead a healthier life without me,” he says. “…I’ll stop trying to read my partial, physical pain. Instead, I’ll read Celan.”
A dark but charming portrait of a man unmoored by his love of an artist.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780811234870
Page Count: 144
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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
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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BOOK REVIEW
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