Williams’ engaging novel takes the reader on a memorable journey, but its destination remains disappointingly unclear.
Aboard a luxury cruise ship, a woman is compelled to confront her past—and embrace her flaws.
“What you need to understand is that everything is coming out of and going into nothingness. That is the principle of wabi sabi,” Ingrid, the protagonist of Williams’ peculiar novel, is told by Keith, her boss aboard the vast luxury cruise liner on which she has lived and worked for the past five years, in the book’s opening passage. Williams has predicated the book’s plot on this idea of inevitable decay and deterioration, the acceptance (even the acceleration) of imperfection—yet elements of the story, like the concept behind it, can be challenging to embrace. For somewhat perplexing reasons, Ingrid has left her cozy bourgeois life with a loyal, loving husband, as well her well-appointed home and all her clothes and belongings, to move, with only the most minimal possessions, into a tiny room on a cruise ship and rotate through menial jobs, such as gift shop worker and manicure parlor manager. When she is at sea and not at work, Ingrid primarily spends her time peering moonily out through the small, sealed porthole in her tiny room or meeting up with her two friends, Mia and Ezra—a sister and brother who also rotate through jobs onboard—to eat bland leftovers in the crew mess, watch old sitcoms, or play Families, a game they’ve created in which they take turns being the mother, father, or doted-upon baby. “We all agreed being the baby was best,” Ingrid narrates. On land, she mostly drinks—a lot—and makes bad decisions. When Keith chooses Ingrid to participate in an eccentric mentoring program, she is forced to reckon with her past missteps, personal shortcomings, and painful losses—and things get really strange, leading to Ingrid’s degradation, but also possibly…growth?
Williams’ engaging novel takes the reader on a memorable journey, but its destination remains disappointingly unclear.Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63893-006-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Zando
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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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