A noteworthy literary achievement and also a good story, sure to be widely discussed and enjoyed.
What begins as a wacky picaresque involving snail conservation, a missing mother, and an RV full of kidnapped Western bachelors shatters into a metafictional reckoning with the war in Ukraine.
An endling is the last known member of a species before it becomes extinct, and Reva’s debut novel is both about one such creature—a charming left-coiling snail named Lefty—and meant to embody the term itself, as a glimpse of a lost world. Or, as the author’s agent asks her at one of the first autofictional asides in the narrative, “Wasn’t your novel originally going to be about a marriage agency in Ukraine?” Well, it probably was. And it was also going to be about snails. The three central characters are 18-year-old Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, who work for a Ukrainian “romance tour” outfit, and Yeva, a scientist dedicated to saving and preserving snail species in her mobile lab (a beat-up RV), though she also moonlights at the bridal agency when she needs cash. The three come together when the sisters devise a plot they hope will result in the return of their missing mother, a famous activist who plotted stunts meant to derail the agency and its industry. The plot involves kidnapping a dozen men from the latest group of wife-seekers and holding them in Yeva’s RV. This plan, and the novel containing it, are themselves derailed by the Russian invasion of 2022. This results in a hasty wrap-up of the narrative early in its second hundred pages, followed by back matter and what turns out to be a rather premature acknowledgments section. After a few blank pages, the novel resumes and continues on both fictional and metafictional trajectories, including grant applications in which Reva seeks support for continuing her work and a resumption of the main storyline in the midst of war. Her success at keeping that storyline alive, full of suspense and humor, while never letting go of what is really happening in the lives of Ukrainian people at home and abroad, is what earns this book comparisons to Percival Everett and George Saunders, though it is also entirely unique.
A noteworthy literary achievement and also a good story, sure to be widely discussed and enjoyed.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780385545310
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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