Elegant, often haunting evocations of a lost world at the end of life.
Vignettes recounting the author’s ethereal dreams of old age, many centering on death and roads not taken.
Translator Matar, a Libyan novelist, met Mahfouz not long after a would-be killer attacked the Nobel Prize–winning author in a Cairo alley, nearly stabbing him to death. Mahfouz recovered, but he seldom ventured out in public again, at least not alone. Before his death in 2006, he recorded dreams that, writes Matar, “are an insight into Mahfouz’s twilight concerns.” In one, Mahfouz dreams that he has been walking along a road when an open window reveals a woman whom he immediately recognizes, though 50 years had robbed her of her beauty. “In the morning,” he writes, “I was deeply unsettled when, reading the newspaper, I came upon her obituary. I was profoundly saddened and wondered which of us had visited the other at that hour of death?” In another dream—and almost all of these vignettes begin “I found myself” or “I saw myself”—he encounters his long-dead mother, who “received [him] with perplexing indifference and then left the room.” Let the oneirologists make of that what they will, but it all makes eminent sense: One door is closing, another is opening. Other of Mahfouz’s dreams point to his political opposition to numerous Egyptian regimes: In one he finds himself in a train station with two areas, one quiet and conducive to work, the other noisy and full of sights and smells. When Mahfouz prefers the first, his companion says, “Yes, but I spotted some of our opponents in the other section,” to which Mahfouz replies, “I am ready for a confrontation.” So, as ever, he is, though always with humane intent, honoring what a different companion tells him in another dream: “One must, as long as we are alive, retain some good faith.”
Elegant, often haunting evocations of a lost world at the end of life.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780811231022
Page Count: 160
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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
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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