A sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter take on family dynamics.
Attenberg follows the women of one family for almost four decades, exploring how each woman’s self-image and ambitions impact—and are impacted by—the others.
In 1971, the Cohens spend Saturday nights as a family playing Scrabble in suburban Chicago. Ailing Holocaust survivor Rudy loves his family but maintains a separate, private life. His wife, Frieda, struggles with anxiety and insecurity. Mild-natured 16-year-old Nancy knows she will always be less special than her brilliant, emotionally intense sister, 12-year-old Shelly. With Rudy’s early death a few years later, the family splinters. Frieda moves to Florida and spirals into alcoholic poverty. Shelly becomes a rising star in Seattle’s tech startup world. Nancy quits college to have a baby, embracing the debatable security of a shaky marriage. Careerist Shelly cannot relate to defensively domestic Nancy, and both avoid contact with troubled Frieda. In the years that follow, the women’s professional and emotional trajectories twist and turn in predictable yet sometimes surprising ways. Nancy’s daughter, Jess, grows into a young woman more comfortable in her skin (literally, given her tattoos) than her forebears and becomes their point of connection. While Attenberg organizes the narrative around vaguely ironic subject headings—“Affairs,” “Emergencies,” etc.—her message is clear: Belonging to a family can be redemptive, whatever its deficiencies. Sexual identity and secrecy are other major themes. Undercurrents of romantic love between women sprout and flourish, while male characters fare badly. Only Rudy, whose homosexuality remains a secret until uncovered by Shelly and a delighted Jess years after his death, is lovable. The straight men are detestable. Both Nancy’s husband and Shelly’s boss do considerable harm thanks to “wandering dick disease.” Shelly’s husband is an obnoxious irrelevance. Attenberg can be harsh; her wry authorial voice creates an emotional distance even from the women, as do her occasional asides telegraphing the future. But the vicissitudes of her characters are undeniably absorbing.
A sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter take on family dynamics.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780063039841
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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