fiction
These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
HOW TO BE EATEN by Maria Adelmann............................................ 4 BROWN GIRLS by Daphne Palasi Andreades.......................................7 HORSE by Geraldine Brooks................................................................. 9 CULT CLASSIC by Sloane Crosley........................................................ 11 HURRICANE GIRL by Marcy Dermansky..........................................12 MORE THAN YOU’LL EVER KNOW by Katie Gutierrez.................. 20 A DOWN HOME MEAL FOR THESE DIFFICULT TIMES by Meron Hadero..................................................................................22 OBLIVION by Robin Hemley................................................................23 THE KINGDOM OF SAND by Andrew Holleran............................... 24 CAN’T LOOK AWAY by Carola Lovering...........................................30 THINGS THEY LOST by Okwiri Oduor.............................................. 33 LIONESS by Mark Powell.................................................................... 35 COMPANION PIECE by Ali Smith......................................................38 GUILTY CREATURES ed. by Martin Edwards................................... 42 THE STARDUST THIEF by Chelsea Abdullah.....................................47 A PROPOSAL THEY CAN’T REFUSE by Natalie Caña.................... 48 A CARIBBEAN HEIRESS IN PARIS by Adriana Herrera................. 48
COMPANION PIECE
Smith, Ali Pantheon (240 pp.) $26.95 | May 3, 2022 978-0-593-31637-5
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1 april 2022
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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HOW TO BE EATEN
Adelmann, Maria Little, Brown (336 pp.) $28.00 | May 31, 2022 978-0-316-45084-3
Familiar fairy tales retold through the modern lenses of group-therapy sessions and reality TV. Bernice has just entered the news cycle, the only survivor of a flamboyant tech billionaire/serial murderer who was known for his eccentric obsession with the color blue, which included dyeing his goatee a signature shade of cyan. Gretel’s iconic photo spread—an image of her and her brother, Hans, reunited with their father in the hospital after having been held captive in a house made of candy—is a part of American truecrime legend; as is the hard-to-fathom assault on Ruby and the shabby wolf-skin coat she’s made out of its perpetrator. Raina, the oldest of the group at almost 40, is familiar mostly for her famous husband, though her face is vaguely reminiscent of some decades-old scandal surrounding their romance, while Ashlee, the most recent winner of the reality dating show The One, seems to be living out her happy ending in real time. All five women have received the same spamlike email inviting them to work through the lingering trauma of their “unusual stor[ies]” in group therapy led by the genially handsome Will, who exhorts them to Absolute Honesty, ostensibly in order to heal. As the summer passes, the women transcend their initial rivalries and suspicions and become bonded by their unique suffering. It seems Will’s therapeutic dictates are beginning to work, but as the women move past their public victimization and into the identities they would like to build in the aftermath, it becomes clear that Will has one more surprise up his impeccable sleeve. Adelmann travels the well-worn paths of some of the most famous fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm with stylistic panache and 21st-century verve. However, it’s her nuanced consideration of our own culpability that makes this book unique. In the end, Adelmann’s true subject is actually her audience, the great anonymous we who consumes the horrors of violent husbands, ravaging wolves, hungry witches, and made-for-TV love stories with such compulsive demand we never pause to think what might come after the happy ending. Both a meditation on trauma and a sendup of our society’s obsession with scripted reality, this book sings.
