A set of captivating tales of strangers in a very strange land.
Russian immigrants in America ponder the meaning of life, navigate supernatural experiences, and search for lost treasure in Budman’s story cycle.
This collection centers on a man known only as “the interpreter of dreams and afflictions”—a semiretired, Russian-born Jewish engineer now living in Boston, where he works as an online medical interpreter for Russian-speaking patients. He and his unnamed wife, in their spare time, help care for their two young granddaughters. In these meandering stories, the interpreter recalls his family’s history in the Soviet Union, where they weathered persecution and exile; conveys gentle life lessons to his grandchildren; observes the medical melodramas of the patients; stages whimsical funerals for a goldfish and a tick; and, in the fraught title story, confronts a mass shooter at an immigrant community center. Some of his adventures are wondrous: He tries out a variety of eternal-youth potions but gets cold feet when he recalls how callow and selfish young people are; receives dream visitations from biblical patriarch Joseph, who dispenses terse advice; and hones his talent for floating up to the ceiling. Intertwined with his narrative is a subplot about Piotr Osipovich Voronin, a penniless Russian immigrant in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, who hopes to recover priceless pearls hidden in ornate pillows that his aunt mailed to America, and Penelopa Belkina, a strapping young woman from Odessa, Ukraine, who uses her computer- hacking skills to help Piotr locate the pillows—in return for a hefty cut of the loot. Their quests introduce them to oddball Americans, including someone with a fair-sized arsenal who also collects teddy-bear figurines and an unemployed woman enduring the purgatory of job-search seminars. Eventually, the quest leads to the interpreter’s doorstep—after he buys one of the fateful pillows.
Budman crafts a story collection that reads more like a novella, exploring coherent, resonant themes, such as the exhilaration that immigrants feel regarding America’s opportunities and their bafflement at its alienating culture; the deep changes in perspective wrought by aging; and the uncertainties of attempting to communicate with and understand other people. His fictional world has a Dostoevskian feel to it; its characters are steeped in metaphysical rumination and spiritual yearnings, which lead to material calculations and occasional eruptions of shocking violence. Full of mordant wit, colorful characters, and disorienting swerves, Budman’s text brims with evocative detail when relating squalid realism—“He spent his fiftieth birthday the night before cursing his fate in heavily accented English, drinking stale Diet Coke mixed with a few drops of leftover vodka, munching on his last Triscuit,”—and bizarrely matter-of-fact magical realism: “The Green Man stands alone on the sidewalk of a new housing development where every house is at least half a million in Earth money….His eyes are undiluted anthracite with speckles of white. His skin is poison-green, the color that makes you think of an industrial spill.” The result is a dazzling read with true philosophical depth amid wild flights of fancy.
A set of captivating tales of strangers in a very strange land.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2022
ISBN: 9781604893342
Page Count: 138
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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