“An incandescent exploration of adolescent angst.” the world cannot give
stress,” he texts a co-worker. “Tombstone reads: ‘Herein lies a man, who died as he lived: tired.’ ”) He’s not thrilled with his living situation, either—he shares an apartment with his mother; he can’t afford to move out on his teacher’s salary. So after a tragedy upends his life, he takes out a loan and lights out for America, aimlessly traveling through the country, eating Whataburgers in Dallas with near strangers and accompanying a taxi driver to a strip club in Chicago. All the while, he’s haunted by his own growing despair: “To exist, even in my own body, was taking its toll; I wanted to escape from it, leave it all behind; I wanted to be free of it. I want to live where there was no consequence to this body, where I was not named, where I was not known….I did not want to know others. I did not even want to know myself.” Bola employs a fascinating narrative structure: The chapters covering Michael’s time in London are told in the first person; the passages in America switch to the third person, emphasizing Michael’s growing alienation from himself. Chronicling someone’s emotional deterioration can be a tricky affair, but Bola acquits himself beautifully; his prose is sensitive and
powerful. Lovers of character studies that tend toward the dark will find much to admire in this novel. Solid writing and sensitive insights make this one a winner.
SHADOWS REEL
Box, C.J. Putnam (368 pp.) $25.20 | March 8, 2022 978-0-593-33126-2 International intrigue crashes into Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming. Good news, bad news for Game Warden Joe Pickett. He’s still recovering from the physical damage he suffered in his last outing, Dark Sky (2021), but he’s been moved into a bigger, better sited house since his old one was torched. The discovery of freelance fishing guide Bert Kizer on the grounds of the Crazy Z-Bar Ranch is clearly connected to a hagiographic album of Nazi photos from 1937 that’s captured the interest of Marybeth Pickett, Joe’s librarian wife. Why would someone have tortured and killed Kizer after all these years to learn the location of the album? As Joe and Marybeth await the arrival of their three daughters for what turns out to be “the worst Thanksgiving we’ve ever had,” Joe’s old friend Nate Romanowski heads off to Colorado in the hope of catching up with Axel Soledad, the outlaw falconer who beat Nate’s wife, threatened his baby, and stole his falcons. After a few rounds of preliminary fencing, Nate realizes that Geronimo Jones, the Black Lives Matter activist who tipped him off about Soledad’s location, is a perfect partner for him. But neither of them realizes that Soledad’s activities will lead them into a lot more violence than they’re ready for and, ultimately, to a lastminute reunion with Joe, who’s called on to go up against “the Eric and Donald Trump Jr. of Hungary.” The broader political overtones aren’t an unmixed blessing, and the socko climax ends predictably, but Joe’s 22nd adventure continues to give good value. Old-school Nazis, newfangled terrorists, Big Sky country—it’s all here.
THE WORLD CANNOT GIVE
Burton, Tara Isabella Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) $27.00 | March 8, 2022 978-1-982170-06-6 Teenage zealotry turns toxic. Earnest Nevada high school junior Laura Stearns is so obsessed with Sebastian Webster’s 1936 work of “wild-eyed genius,” All Before Them, that she convinces her parents to send her to St. Dunstan’s, Webster’s alma mater and the coastal Maine academy where his book is 10
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1 january 2022
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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