This restless, intentionally unsettling novel establishes Porter as a distinctive, confident literary voice.
Deep in the heart of the Covid-19 lockdown, a pregnant Brooklynite goes missing.
Porter’s sophomore novel again features a large cast of diverse New Yorkers, this time met during the spring of 2020. It opens with a list poem about the Union Square Greenmarket, then moves to a chapter called “Daily Cleanse” that starts with this sentence: “Mr. Harper takes sex in doorways.” Theo Harper, a white man we never like much, works in real estate. He has an open marriage to a pregnant white woman named Darla Jacobson, whose mother is living in Paris and who counsels Theo to get Darla out of the city for “breathing room and fresh air.” Darla’s best friend is Ruby Black, a Black woman who owns a restaurant in Union Square with her husband, Katsumi Fujihara. There’s also Xavier Curtis, “The Teenager in the Cardi B T-Shirt” (this and a number of other images are illustrated with small photographs), whose uncle lives in the same Park Slope building as Theo and Darla. Xavier is isolating in his uncle’s empty apartment. It’s a bit unclear where all this is going until a subordinate clause in the fourth chapter reveals that Darla, on the drive upstate to follow her mother’s advice, “turn[s] off her cell phone, which would remain off until it was found in the woods a month later.” The main plot revolves around Darla’s disappearance after a fight with Theo on a hike during which he discloses that he has a Black ancestor; he becomes the main suspect in the police investigation. At the same time, we explore the back- and side stories of the other characters, finding nuggets of practical information and advice along the way—why dull knives are more dangerous, the use of cream of tartar to remove bathtub rings, a guide to the club scene in Japan, and this advice about loss, offered by a private investigator named Yvonne Tender: “Seek out the living and find little things to love until something or someone worth loving comes along.” Meanwhile, a second mystery plot involving 9/11 surfaces. The novel eventually settles its gaze on matters of race and class, underlined by its breathtaking ending.
This restless, intentionally unsettling novel establishes Porter as a distinctive, confident literary voice.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593241868
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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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