Disarmingly powerful—a nuanced story of female resilience that reaches across the ages.
A mysterious orphan becomes a saintly figure after discovering she has a miraculous gift in Payne’s medieval thriller debut.
The novel opens in Konya, Turkey in 1270, where Rumi, the poet and Sufi mystic, is approaching the end of his life. He has been called on to perform the funeral of a girl whose charred body has arrived in the possession of a partially tongueless monk. On attending to her, the poet is overcome by the scent of roses and discovers the girl to still be alive. The narrative then skips back to 1256 to describe the birth of Damascena in a Bulgarian monastery. The friar who assists in her delivery, Ivan Balev, is alarmed by the smell of roses that surrounds the child and by the arrival of a stork that seems to watch over her. After her mother’s disappearance, Damascena is left to be raised by the increasingly malevolent Ivan; as a young woman, she escapes the monastery. She discovers that she has the gift of turning roses into rose oil and is recognized as a saint. However, she again falls into the clutches of Ivan, who devises ways of exploiting her gift. The true meaning of her existence becomes clear only when she escapes to Turkey and encounters Rumi. Payne has crafted an absorbing page-turner whose plot unfolds at a satisfyingly unhurried pace. The author takes time to embellish the story with carefully crafted descriptions: “her long, dark hair—as shiny as a raven’s wing in the mid-day light.” The prose is beautifully uplifting, particularly when communicating the spiritual change Damascena’s gift brings to the monastery: “Young and old spoke of seeing God between the trees, within the trees, in the clouds and in the face of the sun.” There are rare occasions when the author’s descriptive approach is too heavy-handed; however, this detracts little from a thought-provoking story that, in many ways, echoes the tenor of Rumi’s work in its desire to understand the human condition and seek courage in vulnerability.
Disarmingly powerful—a nuanced story of female resilience that reaches across the ages.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9780982279762
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Skywriter Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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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