12 minute read
LIONESS by Mark Powell
tracy flick can’t win
that Depo-Provera hasn’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and she starts looking into whether the clinic’s patients are being coerced into care without full information. Civil’s concern for the autonomy of others is juxtaposed against her secret choice to have an illegal abortion, which she’s never fully worked through emotionally despite Ty’s attempts at conversation. When the clinic’s White director takes over the Williams girls’ care and makes an irreversible decision, Civil is thrust into a world of lawsuits and Senate hearings in an effort to seek justice. Author Perkins-Valdez deftly balances an older Civil, now an OB-GYN, acting as the first-person narrator with a young Civil experiencing the emotional weight of these events in real time. The older Civil’s narration, as she tells the story in 2016 to her own daughter, not only explains the trauma that Erica and India experienced, but also allows her to explain why even though she returned to medical school and dedicated herself to a career focused on the intersections of race, class, ability, and reproductive choice, after more than 40 years she still feels she must return to seek the Williamses’ forgiveness. Inspired by real events, this work of historical fiction admirably balances moral complexity with affecting characters.
Vividly highlights the deep and lasting impact of injustice.
TRACY FLICK CAN’T WIN
Perrotta, Tom Scribner (272 pp.) $27.00 | June 7, 2022 978-1-5011-4406-6
The campaign to create a Hall of Fame at a suburban New Jersey high school lures a few skeletons out of their closets. Perrotta’s 10th novel, following the delightful Mrs. Fletcher (2017), revives the now-iconic protagonist of his third, Election (1998). Tracy Flick, portrayed so unforgettably by Reese Witherspoon in the movie, is not only back, she’s still in high school—now as Dr. Flick, assistant principal in another New Jersey town. Combining narrated chapters with short first-person “testimonies” by five of the characters, the plot unfolds with the you-are-there feel of a documentary, or mockumentary perhaps, though the generally arch tone is belied by a not-so-funny ending. As the story begins, Tracy is at the breakfast table with her 10-year-old daughter, reading the paper. The connection between the #MeToo headlines and her own past (she’s always thought of what happened with her sophomore English teacher as an “affair”) is perturbing. Her once-unshakeable belief in her own agency has been almost fatally challenged since then, shoving her off her track to the presidency of the United States (not “a crazy ambition,” according to her), now offering as booby prize the possibility of taking over for the principal when he retires at the end of the year. But in the meantime, she has to deal with this stupid Hall of Fame project, which pushes many of her buttons. Once again, characters you shouldn’t like at all become strangely sympathetic in Perrotta’s hands. Adulterers, egotists, bullies—well, we all make mistakes. As much as forgiveness seems the explicit theme of the book, its evil twin, revenge, burbles menacingly beneath the surface, and the ending is a shocker.
Nobody told this master of dark comedy there are things you can’t make jokes about. Watch him try.
LIONESS
Powell, Mark West Virginia Univ. Press (304 pp.) $21.99 paper | April 1, 2022 978-1-952271-44-1
An artist takes part in an act of ecoterrorism. There’s a small but memorable coterie of novels in which a troubled narrator attempts to figure out what drove a loved one to an act of political violence. Paul Auster’s Leviathan (1992) is one such book, and Powell’s latest offers a distinctly 21st-century spin on the theme. David, the writer at the heart of this novel, is struggling in the aftermath of a host of harrowing events. One is his young son’s death as a result of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; the other is his wife Mara’s involvement in the bombing of a water bottling facility, which may have killed her though her body was never found. As David looks back on the events that led up to these tragedies, he ponders Mara’s successful art career and his own work as a journalist and playwright. This also involves tracing their involvement in activism, which began in 2003 with “an affair built around private lust and public fury.” Another figure looms large in the book and in David and Mara’s relationship: an activist named Chris Bright who, David recalls, “lived with the discipline required of one existing outside the bounds of society.” David’s narrative moves backward and forward in time, circling different parts of his marriage to Mara, their respective artistic careers, the birth of their son, and the tragic end to it all. Despite this unconventional structure, Powell’s novel is never confusing; instead, it has a tragic force that propels it toward its destination. And while some of David’s own attempts to wrestle with the past and summon alternate explanations or endings for various events feel a bit overlong, the overall effect is emotionally wrenching.
This politically charged novel is haunting (and haunted) in the best possible way.
THE RAVAGED
Reedus, Norman with Frank Bill Blackstone (292 pp.) $26.09 | April 5, 2022 978-1-09-416680-3
This debut novel from Walking Dead actor Reedus follows three thematically connected yet narratively unrelated people as they journey to find themselves. Hunter, a heavily tatted Iraq War vet and self-proclaimed gearhead, attacks his boss at the bike shop after catching him kicking a dog. “Hunter was old school,” the narrator says, rough-hewn but with strong moral fiber and a heart of gold. After learning his father died in a “mysterious house fire” in California, Hunter hops on his Buell S1 motorcycle alongside his buddies Nugget and Itch for a cross-country haul to execute the will. Meanwhile, a wealthy 65-year-old executive named Jackis mugged while traveling aimlessly through South America, neither the first nor the last of his hardships. Jack abandoned his cushy, bloodless office lifestyle after his dying mother told him to “run and never look back,” words he continuously labors to unpack. Finally, Anne, an abused teenage girl in Tennessee, steals her father’s savings and .38 revolver and runs away from home, clobbering her brother upside the head with a cast-iron skillet when he tries to stop her. She connects with her friend Trot, and they join a community of trainhoppers. Co-written by Bill, the story reads like a pastiche of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, the latter of which is namedropped as “great” by multiple characters. Though occasionally hitting some beautiful imagery of the American heartland, Reedus falls victim to implausible dialogue—“Fabiola, you are reading me like a stock report,” Jack says—and overcooked language: “flesh the color of a high-dollar medium-roast coffee bean.” Frequently wordy summaries do little to develop the thinly sketched characters; we know nearly as much about them on Page 25 as on Page 250.
A curious fetishization of outsiders, outlaws, and the down-and-out.
NIGHTWORK
Roberts, Nora St. Martin’s Press (448 pp.) $26.99 | May 24, 2022 978-1-2502-7819-7
A lifelong thief needs to pull off one last job—while getting revenge and keeping the woman he loves safe. When Harry Booth was only 9 years old, he became a thief. With a cancerstricken mother and bills piling up, it was his only option. But as he gets older and keeps breaking into homes—what he calls his “nightwork”—he realizes he possesses an unusual skill for it. Harry can pick any lock, slip into any home, and navigate even the highest tech security system. The nature of his work makes it hard for him to settle down anywhere, so after his mother’s death, he travels around the country, never staying in one city long enough to become suspicious. In New Orleans, though, he makes connections and finds a familylike bond with fellow thief Sebastien. But when he joins Sebastien on a job for a dangerous client named Carter LaPorte, Harry’s life changes forever. Harry moves on and tries to start a low-key life as a college student in Chapel Hill, where he falls for an aspiring writer named Miranda Emerson. But LaPorte isn’t ready to let go of Harry, and he uses threats to Harry’s aunt—and Miranda—to force Harry into working for him again. Harry abandons Miranda and spends years on the run. That is, until he finally gets the chance to take LaPorte down—with Miranda’s help. Roberts takes her time setting up Harry’s character and his motivations, making it easy for the reader to sympathize with a thief who has a code of honor and a deep love for his family. But since the first half of the book is largely an exploration of Harry’s character, the story drags a bit. Once Harry and Miranda’s love story starts in earnest and LaPorte reappears, the plot picks up. The story’s strength, however, lies less in the thrill of Harry’s breakins and more in the complexities of his touching relationships with his mother, his quirky phone-psychic aunt, Sebastien, and Miranda.
A thoughtful exploration of one thief’s motivations and relationships, featuring a healthy dose of romance and suspense.
KINGDOM OF BONES
Rollins, James Morrow/HarperCollins (464 pp.) $23.99 | April 19, 2022 978-0-06-289298-0
A plague threatens to burst from the Congolese jungle and infect the world in the latest bloodcurdling adventure in the Sigma Force series. “Stay away. Dear God, don’t come out here”: That’s the warning ignored by Sigma Force’s Tucker Wayne and his faithful soldier dog, Kane. Near Kisangani, “the literal heart of Africa,” a fearful contagion runs amok. Scientists and locals suffer attacks from crazed ants, bats, and myriad other jungle fauna. Some of the populace becomes nearly catatonic—what’s going on? The answer appears to be viruses, those half-living creatures said to outnumber all the stars in the universe. An infected moth lands on skin with bloodcurdling effect. Baboons go crazy and tear people apart. Ants develop spikes, as though their mandibles aren’t enough for ripping into flesh. The normally cranky hippos are even crankier. And “the deeper we go, the worse it will get.” The evil mining CEO Nolan De Coster loves all of this—he wants a massive pandemic in which he can become the savior, but he’s not all the good guys have to worry about. Even the flora fight
the shore
them. They encounter intelligent fungi and angry trees as they get closer and closer to Mfupa Ufalme, the accursed Kingdom of Bones. Thriller readers love ticking clocks, and this yarn has several, like the timer on the mother of all bombs that is going to explode any minute now. The story is a well-mixed blend of action, science, and occasionally over-the-top imagination. That bats are “furry sacks of viruses” is an easy sell—judgmental trees, not so much. Readers will like the characters, especially the brave Kane and Benjamin Frey, the biologist with an eidetic memory and mild Asperger’s. This excursion into the depths of Africa is more enjoyable than Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, although it gets a little gross in spots.
This one’s fast-moving fun.
CRAZY TO LEAVE YOU
Rothstein, Marilyn Simon Lake Union Publishing (301 pp.) $10.99 paper | May 24, 2022 978-1-5420-3448-7
A 41-year-old woman is spurred by romantic crisis to confront her relationships to food, body, and identity. Career-driven Manhattanite Lauren Leo has drifted from one diet to another for as long as she can remember—subsisting, as of late, mainly on egg whites, steamed broccoli, and self-hatred. The daughter of a rigid, perennially size-4 mother who thinks “mayonnaise [is] the work of the devil,” Lauren grew up pressured to skip dessert; jealous of her naturally thin younger sister, Stephanie; and subject to relentless physical critique from her mother. By her long-awaited wedding to summer camp sweetheart Eric, Lauren has finally dieted herself down to size 12, and when he leaves her at the altar, she’s horrified that all her careful work has been upended. As she attempts to pick up the pieces of her life and throw herself back into her work at an advertising agency, Lauren returns to food with gusto, almost as though it’s a forbidden lover: surreptitiously chowing down greasy cheeseburgers in her wedding dress after being dumped; buying a dozen doughnuts for “the office” and polishing them off in her car. Things get complicated when her estranged older sister, Margo—a small-time actress with her own weight problems—shows up unannounced to stay at Lauren’s apartment, bringing up long-buried family problems. Meanwhile, she grows unexpectedly close with Rudy, a chatty driver assigned to her by the ad agency. As Lauren muddles through her changed life circumstances, she confronts the way food has affected everything from her career trajectory to family aspirations— and, when crisis strikes those closest to her, how to put her problems into perspective. This novel is a self-deprecatingly funny take on the standard career-woman–searching-for-love narrative—Lauren’s relationship with food is alternately comical and darkly affecting, lending the plot depth and dimension (which, in certain areas, could be pushed further). Rothstein’s characters sometimes slot into familiar molds, but they’re consistently lively and fun to read about. Lauren is a highly relatable protagonist, particularly for anyone who has looked in the mirror and wondered, as she does, “Tell me, please: does this body make me look fat?”
A fun, well-paced jaunt.
THE SHORE
Runde, Katie Scribner (304 pp.) $26.99 | May 24, 2022 978-1-982180-17-1
A summer at the shore turns real for a family experiencing loss and love at the same time. Margot and Brian Dunne, who’ve been married forever and are the parents of teenagers Liz and Evy, run a chain of rental houses in Seaside, on the Jersey shore. Former teachers, the couple worked their way up from modest circumstances and lead a life many would consider ideal. Brian’s tortuous descent into anger and oblivion—the agonizing results of a growing brain tumor—marks the course of an emotionally tumultuous summer for the family. Margot shoulders the burden of operating the family business with help from Liz and Evy, who are also continuing their own work: passing from adolescence to adulthood (with the attendant insecurity and heartache that process brings). While maintaining a united front to the outside world, the three women deal with familial misunderstandings and secrets, all now freighted with added urgency in light of Brian’s decline. Margot shares her fears and plans on an online forum, unaware that her internet-savvy girls are, maybe, one step ahead of her there. Liz and Evy don’t know what they don’t know about their parents’ relationship over the years despite internet and household sleuthing. Runde’s sympathetic portrait of a family in crisis is not without humor and insight: The brigade of well-meaning friends and neighbors who support the family with a never-ending supply of IDCs (Inevitable Death Casseroles) is just one finely drawn target here. An epigraph from Springsteen’s “Born to Run” places Runde’s account of abandonment, loneliness, and recovery firmly on the Jersey shore and among its yearning populace.
Runde’s family story is sweet, sad, and surprising.
HOLDING HER BREATH
Ryan, Eimear Mariner Books (256 pp.) $27.99 | May 17, 2022 978-0-06-323608-0
An Irish college student grapples with the aftermath of a breakdown and her poet grandfather’s legacy.
Because the literary world can’t resist comparisons, Irish writer Ryan’s debut coming-of-age novel will inevitably be
