“Medel examines the lives of three generations of women in Madrid with an unsparing eye.” the wonders
meets again some years later; soon they are lovers and have a son. Korelitz deftly limns this tension-riddled setup and the resulting Oppenheimer family dysfunction. Harrison, supersmart and arrogant, looks down on his siblings. Shut-off Lewyn seems to have imbibed his brother’s dismissive assessment of him. Sally keeps secrets from herself and others. Johanna, wracked by a longing for connection neither her children nor husband care to fulfill, learns of Salo’s other family on the eve of the triplets’ departure for college and decides to have the fourth embryo thawed and gestated by a surrogate; Phoebe is born in June 2000, shortly before Lewyn and Sally depart for determinedly separate lives at Cornell and Harrison for an ultra-alternative school that, somewhat paradoxically, nurtures his aggressively conservative views. Part 2, which chronicles the triplets’ college years, is long and at times alienating; Korelitz makes no attempt to soften the siblings’ often mean behavior, which climaxes in an ugly scene at their 19th birthday party in September 2001. It pays off in Part 3, narrated by latecomer Phoebe, now 17 and charged with healing her family’s gaping wounds. The resolution, complete with a wedding,
persuasively and touchingly affirms that even the most damaged people can grow and change. A bit slow in the middle section but on balance, a satisfyingly twisty tale rooted in complex characterizations.
STRANGERS WE KNOW
Marr, Elle Thomas & Mercer (284 pp.) $15.95 paper | May 1, 2022 978-1-5420-3277-3
A San Francisco copy editor finally meets her birth family up in Washington under the worst possible circumstances. After Ivy Hon submits her DNA to a testing company, she’s delighted to learn that Lottie Montagne, a first cousin she never knew she had, is also on their registry, and she’s even more excited when Lottie invites her for a visit so that she can meet her other relatives—though not her mother, Tatum Caine, who vanished shortly after giving birth to Ivy and giving her up for adoption. But the fly in the ointment is a monster: Special Agent Ballo of the FBI tells Ivy that her DNA is also a match for the Full Moon Killer, who’s murdered at least eight young women since 1988 and who, after several years off, has recently come roaring back to life. As if it weren’t stressful enough to be introducing herself for the first time to her birth relatives— imperious Grandma Aggie; Aggie’s ex-cop son, Terry; her sister, Tristen the taxidermist; her disapproving brother, Phillip; and the blessedly normal-seeming Lottie—now Ivy has to wonder which one of them is a serial killer. It’s a great setup, but Marr, who zigzags among the viewpoints of Ivy, Tatum, and a third party who seems more and more likely to be the Full Moon Killer, keeps upping the stakes like a compulsive gambler. The childhood secrets! The seductive men! The abusive sex cult! The authority figures who can’t be trusted! And on top of everything else, the approach of the full moon! Don’t look behind you. Or in front of you. Or off to the side either.
THE WONDERS
Medel, Elena Trans. by Lizzie Davis & Thomas Bunstead Algonquin (240 pp.) $26.95 | March 1, 2022 978-1-64375-211-2 Prizewinning Spanish poet Medel’s debut novel examines the lives of three generations of women in Madrid with an unsparing eye. A series of interlocking narratives about María, Carmen, and Alicia—all working-class women who find themselves in the capital city for varied reasons—the novel traces 20
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15 february 2022
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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