An amusing, unsettling, discomfitingly resonant collection.
A compendium of 41 casually brief stories about characters who perceive sinister intentions in every word, look, and gesture.
A woman is drawn into a disagreement with a stranger over the stigma of narcissism. A man grows threatened by his neighbor’s newly raised Gadsden flag—the kind that says “Don’t Tread on Me”—and decides to confront him. A couple enacts a scheme to prevent a man from parking his truck in front of their house. These are some premises of Pourciau’s fourth collection of short stories, mostly depicting the first-person perspectives of aggrieved, suspicious, emotionally isolated people obsessing over others’ hidden thoughts. Pourciau’s oeuvre focuses almost exclusively on minor disruptions to our daily routines that have the potential to drive us mad. The longest story—one of the best and most complete entries, “Invade”—describes a woman incessantly pestering her new neighbors for an invitation to help them redecorate, eliciting increasingly curt and hostile evasions. Averaging around four pages each, most of the entries are incredibly slight and largely absent of closure, suspending readers in emotional purgatory. Trying to read just one at a time has the addictively insubstantial effect of eating a single potato chip. But beware: Attempting to ease the irresolution by binging a bunch in quick succession can be downright nauseating from ingesting such unrelenting paranoia. Steeping oneself in Pourciau’s world of lunatic anxiety and claustrophobic discourtesy can be overwhelming, but the cumulative impact is hard to dismiss—and the familiarity of the situations he explores is a sign of the times. One character summarizes a core truth connecting the vignettes: “Society is based on the premise that we remain civil and make the best of our proximity to others.” And another adds a corollary: “Liberating suppressed thoughts can stress the veneer that holds us together.”
An amusing, unsettling, discomfitingly resonant collection.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781961897601
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Four Way
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.
Scottoline’s latest links her great love of Italy with her long record of female-centered crime fiction.
Julia Pritzker has a presentiment that something terrible is around the corner, but she never imagines just how terrible: When her husband, Philadelphia attorney Mike Shallette, tries to protect her from a man who grabs her designer bag, he gets stabbed to death before her eyes. Julia’s grief becomes laced with guilt when she realizes that her daily horoscope had predicted a calamity she’s now convinced she could have prevented. The news from Italian attorney Massimiliano Lombardi that his late client has left her millions in cash and an estate worth nearly as much again doesn’t comfort her, but it does provide distraction—especially since she’s never heard of Emilia Rossi and has no idea why she’s been chosen as her heir. Since Julia, adopted at an early age by a couple who’ve been dead for years, wonders if Emilia might have been her biological grandmother, she travels to Chianti in hope of recovering some of Emilia’s DNA. Unfortunately, caretakers Anna Mattia Vesta and Piero Fano have burned all of Emilia’s clothing and personal items on her orders, so there’s nothing left to test. Growing convinced that the stars are directing her and that her history is rooted in Emilia’s decrepit house, Julia turns down repeated offers for the property and resolves to secure evidence confirming the relationship between Emilia and her. Now all she has to do is protect herself from the shadowy figures tracking and following her and recover from a series of vivid, hallucinatory nightmares that seem to be the cost of claiming her heritage.
The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781538769997
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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