THE ANGEL OF ROME And Other Stories
Walter, Jess Harper/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $27.99 | June 28, 2022 978-0-06-286-811-4 A dozen stories spell excellent news for fans of the Bard of Spokane. Since Beautiful Ruins, his 2012 blockbuster, Walter has won a legion of readers who have been through the backlist and impatiently gobbled down his two follow-ups—a story collection, We Live in Water (2013), and the excellent historical novel Cold Millions (2020). This second collection of shorts is a glorious addition to the oeuvre, with a much brighter mood than its gloomy predecessor. The title story, which began its life as an Audible original, is a mini Beautiful Ruins, including an Italian setting, beautiful movie-star character, and heartbreakingly adorable but benighted male protagonist, here a blue-collar boy from Nebraska whose year abroad involves church-sponsored Latin lessons at a “papal community college” in a Roman industrial building. This. Story. Is. So. Damn. Funny. And almost ridiculously heartwarming. But the same can be said of many of the others, no matter how apparently depressing their topic. For example, the story about a father who must be institutionalized, “Town & Country,” opens with the fact that “Dad literally could not remember to not screw the sixty-year-old lady across the street,” and creates for the man in question an outlaw assisted living center in a seedy, one-story motel in northern Idaho where the meatloaf is still $2 and all the drinks are doubles. The climate change story, “The Way the World Ends,” brings two very depressed Ph.D. students to Mississippi State University to vie for a position in the geosciences department, then throws them together with a three-weeks-out-of-thecloset, very lonely college student named Jeremiah who’s trying to decide whether it’s worth risking life and limb to march in his first Gay Pride parade. What one of the “climate zealots” says to defend his newfound love of country music resonates through the collection: “Life is hard, the songs seemed to say, but at least it’s funny, and it rhymes.” Not sure why the author is in such a good mood, but it’s contagious. Prepare for delight.
THE MIDCOAST
White, Adam Hogarth (336 pp.) $27.00 | June 7, 2022 978-0-593-24315-2 An ambitious family’s rise and fall plays out in a small town on the Maine coast. This debut novel opens with what will also be its last scene: a fancy lawn party and lobster bake on the waterfront 46
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15 april 2022
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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property of the Thatch family, prominent in the little town of Damariscotta. A celebration of the Amherst College women’s lacrosse team, of which Allie Thatch is a member, it’s a nice party until local English teacher and lacrosse coach Andrew goes poking around in the house and notices some photos of a burned car with two bodies in it—and then the police show up. The book’s narrator, Andrew was raised in Damariscotta, went away for college and jobs, but has moved his young family back. Andrew sometimes narrates in first person, although much of the story is framed as interviews he does after the day of the party for a book he’s writing. He’s known Ed Thatch since they were teenagers, when Andrew worked for the Lobster Pound, owned by Ed’s father, and Ed treated him like a greenhorn. Ed’s life changed when he met Stephanie LeClair. Although, as one character says, “they don’t come from much,” Steph wants nice things and Ed wants her to have them. Circling between past and present, the book recounts how they get them. While he’s fishing for lobsters, Ed starts burglarizing the posh summer homes along the shore during the off season. From there, it’s a quick slide into smuggling drugs from above the Canadian border. Meanwhile, Steph goes to college and becomes the town’s manager and unofficial mayor, ironically dubbing it “Maine’s Safe Haven.” Their son, EJ, becomes a cop, mainly so he can protect his family’s criminal enterprises. It looks like Allie might just make a step up socially and out of Damariscotta altogether after she gets a lacrosse scholarship. But then that party happens. White handles suspense and a complex plot well, but the characters don’t quite come into focus—it’s never clear why Ed and Steph find each other so compelling, and Allie, who serves as a motivation for many of her family’s actions, is a blank herself until very late in the book. A small-town riff on The Great Gatsby suffers from underdeveloped characters.
THE WIFE BEFORE
Williams, Shanora Dafina/Kensington (320 pp.) $16.95 paper | June 28, 2022 978-1-4967-3111-1 A second wife is drawn into the tragedy that killed the first—and must find out the truth before she’s next. Needing to make some quick money, Samira accepts a waitressing job at a charity event where she has a meet-cute with famous golfer Roland Graham. Soon they are an item, and he’s wowing her with trips and gifts—and in the bedroom. Samira’s brother cautions her, though, to be careful; Roland’s first wife, Melanie, died under mysterious circumstances, and there’s a lot of speculation (on social media, anyway) that Roland was responsible. Samira’s doubts are soon put to rest by Roland’s reassurances, and they get married and move into Roland’s mansion in Colorado—the mansion where he used to live with Melanie. Though the setting lacks a true gothic flavor, there is a definite current of unease that affects Samira’s embracing of
