A sui generis, sometimes woolly exploration of the complexity and long reach of racism.
A revised version of Laymon’s elliptical, time-folding work of metafiction about Southern racism.
The first novel by Laymon, initially published in 2013, is effectively two novels, both potent yet often funny character studies. In one, it’s 2013 and Citoyen, aka City, is a Mississippi high schooler vying to win a national title in the “Can You Use That Word in a Sentence” competition, a kind of spelling bee for syntax. City's onstage explosion (over the fraught, contentious word niggardly) goes viral, prompting him to escape to his grandmother’s home, where he pores over Long Division, a novel that purports to explain the recent, much-discussed disappearance of Baize, a local Black girl. City’s stint with his grandmother is marked by confrontations with racists and extreme payback against them as well as contemplations of racist language from the N-word on down. The novel’s second part is Long Division itself, in which City is a teenager in 1985 who, with the help of his friend Shalaya, finds a portal in the woods that sends them forward to 2013, where Baize is an aspiring rapper, and back to 1964, where he’s forced to confront the Ku Klux Klan. In style and structure, Laymon’s novel is an inheritor to Black postmodern literature of the 1960s and '70s—Toni Morrison most famously but also Leon Forrest, Gayl Jones, and William Melvin Kelley. And like many pomo works, the plotting gets convoluted as City attempts to untangle the various threads of his personal history. But the struggle is part of the point. Laymon wants to position his complicated hero as part of a throughline of violence against Blacks across decades, from microaggressions to lynching. City proclaims that the Long Division he’s reading is “about tomorrow and yesterday and the magic of love.” That’s also true, if obliquely, of the novel Laymon has written.
A sui generis, sometimes woolly exploration of the complexity and long reach of racism.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982174-82-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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