A promising debut notable for sharp characterizations and a vividly conveyed sense of time and place.
Creative partnership or romantic relationship? Berkeley undergrads who connect over his music and her ideas about it spend eight years agonizing over which is more important.
Brickley’s first novel lovingly evokes the indie scene of the early 21st century—and lots of other pop music as well—while deftly crafting the bumpy emotional journey of her insufferably opinionated, touchingly vulnerable heroine. Narrator Percy Marks clicks with singer/songwriter Joe Morrow from the moment they bond in the fall of 2000, in classic collegiate fashion, over the distinction between “a perfect song” and “a perfect recording.” He appreciates her critiques of his songs, which they both know make them better, and when Joe’s girlfriend, Zoe, tells Percy that she’s gay, Percy moves on her long-simmering attraction to Joe. It’s definitely reciprocated, but Joe tells her he values their work together too much to complicate it. This back and forth goes on while Percy gets an MFA at Columbia and Joe tours and self-releases his first album—“with special thanks” to Percy, who told him she didn’t want co-writing credit. She’s not so sure about that decision four years later, long after she’s told him she can’t work with him anymore, when she finds a song she co-wrote on his second album, with the same evasive “special thanks” credit. Percy now lives in San Francisco, where she writes a music blog in tandem with a vintage early-aughts job as an “intelligence specialist” searching out “trendsetters” for corporate brands looking for street cred. Zoe, now her best friend and roommate, offers a running reality check on Percy’s tortured, ambivalent feelings about Joe and her future career goals as they navigate the years from 9/11 to Barack Obama’s election. Brickley’s sensitive depiction of Percy’s (very) slowly growing professional and personal self-confidence will appeal even to readers who miss most of the pop-culture references and are weary of the “will they/won’t they” plot.
A promising debut notable for sharp characterizations and a vividly conveyed sense of time and place.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593799086
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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