“The adventures of a trio of genius kids united by their love of gaming and each other.” tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
parents’ pleas to finish her abandoned dissertation and marry her beau. The novel’s form mimics both the narrator’s situation of being suspended in a liminal state of waiting and the natural circuitous path of a person’s thoughts, with sentences being repeated and scenes frequently circling back to the same places. Unfortunately, the book’s style comes at the cost of real poignancy, as the reader tends to be lulled into a state of disconnected boredom. An ambitious experimental novel that succeeds in form and subject but is sometimes tedious to read.
INFINITE DIMENSIONS
Treadway, Jessica Delphinium (240 pp.) $28.00 | June 7, 2022 978-1-953002-11-2
Flawed and struggling characters face their mistakes and suffer the consequences in Treadway’s short story collection. In “Providence,” a woman meets her addiction personified on the same night that she meets her idol. In “Sky Harbor,” another woman confronts an act of emotional infidelity that destroyed her marriage and broke her son’s heart. And in “A Flying Bird,” a third woman impulsively steals a cake out of someone’s car—and eats it. In the universe of Treadway’s stories, which are strongly characterdriven, some people recur while others are featured only once. Conflict is frequently conveyed through internal dialogue, though the spoken dialogue is believable and true to each character as well. Whether the conflict is large or small, the characters are united by references in each story to a fictional Russian writer’s short story about a housewife and a talking sugar bowl; this weaves a whimsical link from story to story and also makes it clear that while each story stands alone, they are also meant to serve as parts of a whole. These passing references to the sugar bowl story provide a glimpse of the unifying themes of this collection: an exploration of the little voices we heed and those we ignore; the suggestion that there is some other life just outside the reach of our fingertips—a life more surreal, a life that reflects the roads not taken, the things said or left unsaid and often regretted. Treadway will leave readers reflecting on choices we’ve made that have set us on our current paths, but she also allows space for us to believe that we can change direction if we only listen to the voices of our “sugar bowls”—instead of questioning our own sanity. Thought-provoking and engaging.
1,000 COILS OF FEAR
Wenzel, Olivia Trans. by Priscilla Layne Catapult (288 pp.) $16.95 paper | July 5, 2022 978-1-64622-050-2
A young woman probes her identity. German musician, performer, and playwright Wenzel makes an auspicious fiction debut with a formally unconventional novel, translated by Layne, consisting mostly of responses from a biracial, bisexual woman to a questioner whose identity remains a mystery—and may even be the protagonist herself. Fragmented revelations swirl into a narrative that bounds through place and time as the narrator reflects on racism, xenophobia, colonialism, capitalism, class— and her abiding sense of loss. She grew up in East Germany, the daughter of a rebellious, angry, erratic mother who often left her in the care of her staunchly German grandmother. Her father returned to his native Angola shortly after her birth, but her mother, refused an emigration permit, was forced to stay in a country she hated. The narrator’s twin brother killed himself at 19. “All the men in my family are either dead or far away,” she reflects. “And the women left behind are damaged.” Anxious, depressed, often lonely, the narrator has been damaged by family trauma as well as by the “explicit racism” that victimized her and her brother: “smashed windows in our childhood bedrooms,” taunting and malice from “classmates, parents and everyone who was generally a fan of Hitler’s.” “When I was a kid,” she recalls, “there was nothing I wanted more than a cream. A wondrous ointment that I could put on before going to bed that would make me white overnight.” As scenes of her life unfold, the narrator reveals encounters with neo-Nazis, threatening to all who are marginalized; a breakup with her Vietnamese girlfriend; her job at a market research call center; trips to Vietnam, New York, and North Carolina. “In the U.S., I’m Blacker than in Germany,” she decides. A crucial question drives her: How have race, nationality, and “a Capitalist mentality” shaped the woman she has become? A prismatic novel, thoughtful and unsettling.
TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW
Zevin, Gabrielle Knopf (416 pp.) $28.00 | July 5, 2022 978-0-593-32120-1
The adventures of a trio of genius kids united by their love of gaming and each other. When Sam Masur recognizes Sadie Green in a crowded Boston subway station, midway through their college careers at Harvard and MIT, he shouts, “SADIE 36
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1 may 2022
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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