An imaginative but ultimately disappointing set of tales.
Budman’s collection of short stories offers an occasionally surreal examination of immigration to America with an emphasis on Russian newcomers.
In his debut novel, My Life at First Try (2008), the author looked at life in the United States and Soviet Russia using flash-fiction narratives. His latest collection of 21 tales also observes the American dream through a varied cast of immigrant characters. The opening work, “A Perfect Rhyme Translated From Scratch,” is about a Chinese restaurant server living in a predominantly White hamlet in northern Pennsylvania. Her manager, a wannabe poet who’s separated from his wife, becomes infatuated with her despite the fact she pays him little attention. This is followed by “The Selfless Quarantine,” an eerie vision of a country brought to its knees by a deadly pandemic. In “American Zolushka,” a 20-something Russian woman is intent on applying to a mail-order bride agency, hoping to escape to a “clean and Technicolor” America. This Zolushka (or Cinderella) character reappears in “Five Minutes After Midnight,” now divorced, living in New York state, and involved with the Greek god Morpheus. Such bizarre couplings aren’t unusual in Budman’s writing; in “The Titan. An Office Romance,” for instance, a pre-Olympian god develops a crush on a girl working in the adjacent office cubicle, and in “Super Couple,” Soupmann—Superman’s third cousin, twice removed—falls for Saltwoman. Things get stranger still in the closing story, “Cinderella’s Sister or the Bridge to Nowhere,” in which an old man dies following dental bridgework and decides to phone his dentist from beyond the grave.
The author’s previous set of tales was sardonically amusing, and there’s a scattering of laugh-out-loud moments in this second book. For instance, at one point, a narrator wryly outlines Soupmann’s priorities as a superhero: “He fights for truth and justice, and sometimes for truth and the American way, and sometimes for justice and the American way, but not for all three at once. Otherwise, he’d be stretching too thin.” The author also produces some tremendously witty similes at times; regarding the elderly gentleman’s dentistry, the narrator remarks: “The old man’s mouth feels like the international space station: half of the teeth American and half Russian.” On other occasions, his writing is quite thought-provoking: “Everyone knows that reality is just a poor immigrant next to a dream of a newly minted native.” However, the tales include occasional moments of clipped, grammatically awkward phrasing: “Few minutes later, she was crying on his shoulder. He forgot when the last time a woman did that was.” Soviet-born Budman focuses mainly on the Russian immigrant experience, which he keenly observes. However, it’s disappointing that the stories here largely overlook immigrants of other nationalities. The nameless, underdeveloped Chinese server, for instance, merely becomes a blank canvas upon which her manager can project his skewed fantasies of exoticism: “He imagines her sitting in the lotus position…needles dotting her back.” The end product is, as a result, a somewhat culturally narrow study.
An imaginative but ultimately disappointing set of tales.Pub Date: July 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-60-489289-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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