An intriguing, sometimes effective tale about redemption and a remarkable mentor.
The lives of a dissolute sideshow sword swallower and a self-destructive young man intersect.
Debut novelist Robinson introduces this story as a fictionalized account of the sideshow performer Capt. Don Leslie’s life and the author’s own journey. The result: colorful storytelling combined with self-conscious, confessional messaging about addiction and dysfunction. The novel, spanning decades, begins in the 1960s with Robinson’s third-person narrative about a sword-swallower named Duke. The performer is in San Francisco for his Florida-based circus’ off-season, fueling his addiction to alcohol and methamphetamine and eagerness to get back to the big tent. Duke’s gritty odyssey encompasses his growing celebrity, a life-changing stint in prison, and his affection for the so-called sideshow “freaks” that became his family when he joined the circus as a 15-year-old runaway. This section is often genuinely moving, despite the choppy cadence of short, declarative sentences (“Alcoholism and religion prevailed. It was rarely peaceful at home. Duke was smoking cigarettes at thirteen”). Before a much older Duke and 35-year-old fictional Gary meet by happenstance in Chico, California, the latter picks up the narrative as a nihilistic high school graduate in the 1980s, embarking on decades of addiction and dysfunction. Gary recounts this as an exhaustive series of anecdotes, with a jarring blend of reminiscence, self-flagellation—“I am no superstar, and that is killing me”—and philosophical interjections: “The purpose of why we are here and who we are engaged with is rarely revealed until the moment has arrived.” This aspect of the book becomes increasingly forced. The impact of Gary’s redemptive journey—sparked by Duke’s mentorship and a consciousness-raising encounter with a vomiting woman named Angel—is further weakened by long passages quoting 19th-century secularist Robert G. Ingersoll and ruminations about Christianity and the morality of criminalizing drug use. The narrative flow is hampered, too, by characters who repeatedly speak “assuredly” and “excitedly.”
An intriguing, sometimes effective tale about redemption and a remarkable mentor.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2017
ISBN: 978-0999469804
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Grobinbooks
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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