An uneven collection from an exciting young author.
The author of Days of Distraction (2020) explores timeless themes in short fiction.
Unemployed after being replaced by a piece of software, a woman in her 30s is burning through her severance pay, spending her days eating weed gummies and binge-watching dating shows. When a former co-worker steers a housesitting gig her way, she finds the idea of an “escape into someone else’s house, someone else’s life” attractive. This job takes her to a secluded home in the hills owned by a couple embarking on a trip to Portugal. Our narrator is free to enjoy the home’s amenities—meditation room, swimming pool, Peloton, professional espresso machine—as long as she agrees to stay out of the wife’s painting studio and a dilapidated shed. Despite the contemporary details, this is a perfect setup for a gothic tale, and Chang delivers a story in which the unexplained takes on the power to chill because of how it occurs within the quotidian abnormality of extreme privilege. This story, “Unknown by Unknown,” is the first in the collection, and it is far and away the best. The title story is also very good. In it, a series of rituals meant to honor ancestors forces a young girl to reckon with a massacre that occurred long before she was born—a massacre that her now-dead grandfather had tried to make her understand. The rest of the stories presented here are substantially less satisfying. Chang’s debut novel was brilliantly executed. Most of the works we see here feel like warm-up exercises or not entirely successful experiments. The author seems to have a particular aversion to—or difficulty with—endings. The openness at the end of “Unknown by Unknown” feels both scary and weirdly thrilling. Elsewhere, though, stories end at a moment that is maybe supposed to seem portentous but comes across as arbitrary.
An uneven collection from an exciting young author.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9780062951847
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.
A year in the life of the No. 2 boarding school in America—up from No. 19 last year!
Rumors of Hilderbrand’s retirement were greatly exaggerated, it turns out, since not only has she not gone out to pasture, she’s started over in high school, with her daughter Shelby Cunningham as co-author. As their delicious new book opens, it’s Move-In Day at Tiffin Academy, and Head of School Audre Robinson is warmly welcoming the returning and new students to the New England campus, the latter group including a rare midstream addition to the junior class. Brainiac Charley Hicks is transferring from public school in Maryland to a spot that opened up when one of the school’s most beloved students died by suicide the preceding year. She will be joining a large, diverse cast of adult and teenage characters—queen bees, jealous second-stringers, boozehounds young and old, secret lesbians, people chasing the wrong people chasing other wrong people—all of them royally screwed when an app called Zip Zap appears and starts blasting everyone’s secrets all over campus. How the heck…? Meanwhile, it seems so unlikely that Tiffin has jumped up to the No. 2 spot in the boarding-school rankings that a high-profile magazine launches an investigation, and even the head is worried that there may have been payola involved. The school has a reputation for being more social than academic, and this quality gets an exciting new exclamation point when the resident millionaire bad boy opens a high-style secret speakeasy for select juniors in a forgotten basement. It’s called Priorities. Exactly. One problem: Cinnamon Peters’ mysterious suicide hangs over the book in an odd way, especially since the note she left for her closest male friend is not to be opened for another year—and isn’t. This is surely a setup for a sequel, but it’s a bit frustrating here, and bobs sort of shallowly along amid the general high spirits.
A boarding-school fantasia, with Hilderbrand’s signature upgrades to the cuisine and decor. Sign us up for next term.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780316567855
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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