Tag Archive for: fiction

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

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Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11pm tonight. But our narrator does not know that yet. In fact, he does not know anything, including his own name.

Minutes ago, he woke up in the woods yelling the name Anna, heard a scream that was abruptly cut off, and was sent back to a crumbling manor house by a mysterious stranger – probably a murderer if the scream is any indication.

No one at Blackheath Manor seems particularly worried about the potential murder in the woods. One of the men takes our narrator up to his room, trying to help with his memory loss. The narrator’s name is Sebastian Bell, he is a doctor. He is at Blackheath to attend a masquerade ball that evening in honor of Evelyn Hardcastle’s return from Paris.

Bell continues to have strange interactions all day with people who seem to know him – including one interaction with a man in a plague doctor’s mask who delivers cryptic warnings and once with Evelyn Hardcastle herself.

Evelyn makes an immediate impression on Bell; she is one of the few people willing to help him investigate the scream he heard in the woods. Everyone else in the house has dismissed his concerns, for the most part because no one seems to know an Anna.

Late in the evening, Sebastian Bell returns to his bedroom to find a dead rabbit and a note signed by The Footman, a murderer that our narrator has been warned to look out for. Bell faints on the spot. When he regains consciousness, our narrator is in the body of Blackheath’s butler and back at the beginning of that same day.

Each time our narrator wakes up, he does so in a new body. He will have the chance to live through this day eight different times, through the eyes of eight different people. At 11pm, Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered. He will witness her death multiple times, from multiple perspectives.

Our narrator has been placed in a time loop to solve her murder, but he is not the only one – there are two other people trying to find the answer to this mystery, and only one of them will be allowed to leave once it is solved.

THE 7 1/2 DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE is a unique mystery. The narrator has the opportunity to gain first-hand experience from eight different witnesses to the crime. He gains more information each time he inhabits someone new, sometimes interacting with himself in a different body.

As he races to solve Evelyn’s murder, the narrator gains more insight into why he is here in the first place. As the man in the plague doctor mask tells him, this is not the first time he has experienced these eight days. He will keep living this day through these eight people until he – or one of his rivals – solves the murder.

 

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Book review by Alyssa Berry, Technical Services Librarian

Lazarus Man by Richard Price

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If you’ve watched HBO’s The Wire, then you’re familiar with Richard Price. As one of the show’s writers, his story lines were like urban sociological studies. Price’s novels, such as Clockers, Lush Life, and Samaritan, also display the constant pressure-cooker environment within high-density neighborhoods. Plus they are just flat-out fun to read, as is his latest novel, Lazarus Man. For example, if you’re amused when coming across a random character being described not merely as “thin,” but as “thin as a home-rolled reefer,” then Price might be for you.

Make no mistake, Price’s work has depth, often finding its way into university course catalogs. Still, we read novels not for outright edification. It’s the story and characters that earn our attention. And Price always delivers on that front, replete with his trademark snappy dialogue. Where Lazarus Man moves a little differently is how the novel unfurls. There’s an initial event, and then we just follow four main characters as they carry on. It’s not unlike Robert Altman’s film Short Cuts, where we shadow characters just out living their lives. In Lazarus Man, it’s not 1990s Los Angelinos we’re tailing, but four East Harlemites in 2008. Maybe their paths will cross. Or maybe they won’t. Regardless, it’s their proverbial journeys we’re joining.

The anchor character is Anthony. He’s forty-two, unemployed, well on his way to a divorce, and attempting to kick a cocaine habit by trying out every bar on Lenox Avenue. Like some “80-proof Goldilocks,” he’s seeking the one bar that’s just right.

Then comes the event that sends the novel on its way: a tenement building collapses. Nearby, Royal, a down on his luck, third-generation mortician—who pretty much loathes his job—dozes in one of his unsold coffins. In order to make some extra cash, he’s playing the corpse as a group of film students shoot a horror film in his parlor. The sound of the building’s collapse sends Royal bolt-upright in his casket, properly freaking out the film students. Royal then has his young son put on an ill-fitting suit and go out into the chaos to hand out mortuary business cards.

Felix is a taciturn 20-something photographer who moved into the city from upstate. He grabs a camera and gets to work around the wreckage. Emergency personnel arrive as both survivors and nearby neighbors mill about, the “ash-coated” and the unscathed roaming together. The neighborhood becomes like some sort of “hallucinating block party.”

Mary, a beleaguered detective, is charged with finding out if an unaccounted for man is either somewhere in the rubble or is passively trying not to be found. A few years earlier, a freak elevator accident almost killed Mary. The event seems to have rattled her enough that she’s leaned back from most human relationships. It’s not that she doesn’t care. It’s more that she cares too much.

A victim of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, no one thinks to look for Anthony in the debris. When he’s eventually unearthed, he becomes a minor local celebrity, called upon to speak at various community events. He’s good at it, providing an outlet for pent-up community grief that goes beyond a collapsed building. The real question is whether Anthony believes what he’s saying.

Anthony’s mother was Black and his father white. Both are recently deceased, with Anthony now living in their apartment. Anthony’s long spiral began when he was kicked out of Columbia University for selling drugs. Someone suggested that he claim the university singled him out because of his race, but Anthony wanted no part of it. He knew that wasn’t the reason. Besides, his father was constantly charging racial discrimination on behalf of the Black community. Sometimes he was correct, yet at other times he wasn’t even close. Either way, he was always making a public scene about it. In many ways, Anthony wanted the same thing as his Black neighbors: for his father to shut up and mind his own business.

There is a surprise development at the end of the novel, underscoring the epistemological breakdown that fact and truth cannot be used interchangeably. Throughout, all the characters strive to do the decent thing in a difficult world. A good example is a mother who shows up to a community event to complain about how the cops harass some of the neighborhood teenagers. When a police officer at the meeting points out that her son often hangs around known gang members, the mother says that fact doesn’t mean he’s doing anything wrong. She continues, “You live in a certain place you got to be crewed up to not be a target. It’s a negotiated life.”

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Review by Jason Sullivan

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

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Ganymedes Piscero is in the last place he would ever want to be: on a magical ship traveling toward the most magical place on the continent, surrounded by the heirs to the provinces of Concordia – who all have magical gifts, and who all hate him.

Ganymedes – he prefers Dee, actually – is also the heir to a province: Fish Province. They govern the ocean-side beaches and have a duty to provide fish for the empire. As the heir of Fish Province, Dee should also have a Blessing, but one has never manifested for him.

Dee’s father has forced him to pretend to have a Blessing, to cover up his own infidelity. Luckily for him, no one is open about their gifts. Most of the twelve heirs refuse to share them, unless they are impossible to hide. The heir of Ox Province has the ability to breathe fire and a hot temper to match.

This pilgrimage was organized to celebrate the emergence of the twelfth heir: a tiny six-year-old from Grasshopper Province who recently manifested her Blessing. With the completion of this new generation of leaders, it is time for them all to journey to the mountain where the first Blessings were bestowed.

It is a twelve-day journey, but on the first night, Eudora – heir to Dragon Province and the Empire itself – is murdered.

As the bodies of the other Blessed begin to pile up, Dee, Grasshopper, and Wyatt of Bear Province team up to uncover the killer.

VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED by Frances White is a magical locked-room mystery. The Blessed are isolated from the rest of the world while they are onboard this vessel, but they are far from helpless.

Apart from Grasshopper, they have all known each other for a number of years. They have had time to form alliances and enforce the provincial hierarchy. And with so few of their powers known, it will be difficult to determine who is capable of hiding a murder.

Despite spending the entire novel on the boat, readers are able to get a good sense of the world. Each of the provinces of Concordia has its own terrain and culture, and the Blessed from each province has been shaped by their region.

White does an excellent job writing characters. Each of the twelve has their own unique voice and perspective. As Dee travels around the ship, trying to solve the murders, we get to experience each of them in their own environments. Dee’s voice is able to bring a lot of humor to the book, even in the face of mortal peril.

VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED works well as both a fantasy book and a mystery. When I read mystery fiction, I like it to be slightly unpredictable while also feeling solvable. Like I could have figured it out, given enough time. This book threads that needle for me. I had some suspicions that turned out to be accurate and there were also surprises waiting for me at the end.

 

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Book review by Alyssa Berry, Technical Services Librarian

The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal

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In its third year, Joplin Public Library will again host Joplin Reads Together in April, the library’s Community Read designed for adults. Focused upon one bestselling novel, Joplin Reads Together aims to increase awareness of the Library and its services, provide a shared experience for the community, promote reading, and foster connection to local organizations. Joplin Public Library recently announced the 2025 Joplin Reads Together book selection: The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal. The second of Stradal’s three published books, The Lager Queen of Minnesota became a National Bestseller in its first week of release, was named one of the best books of 2019 by NPR, USA Today, and Booklist, and won the 2020 WILLA Literary Award for Contemporary Fiction. Programs inspired by the book will take place in April, organized by Joplin Public Library and its Joplin Reads Together Community Partners, culminating in a visit from J. Ryan Stradal to Joplin Public Library on April 24th. Community partners include Friends of the Joplin Public Library, Post Art Library, and MSSU Spiva Library. Community members can participate by reading the book and joining programs offered by the Library and its community partners throughout the month of April. Copies of The Lager Queen of Minnesota are available to check out at Joplin Public Library, and the full list of Joplin Reads Together events can be found on joplinpubliclibrary.org/joplinreadstogether.

The Lager Queen of Minnesota has a lot to offer: family drama, sibling tension, humor, sadness, life in the midwest, pie baking, beer brewing, business ownership, and (if you listen to the audiobook version as I did) a slew of Minnesotan accents. One aspect that I am excited about with this novel is the setting of the midwest. It plays an obvious role in the characters lives, often being mentioned or explained as reasoning for certain customs or happenings, and as Joplin is located in the midwest I think it is a relatable, and often funny, detail of the novel. 

The novel focuses on two sisters living in Minnesota: Edith and Helen. Raised on a farm, their relationship meets with sudden turbulence when their father dies and leaves all inheritance to Helen. Helen says she intends to share a portion of the inheritance with Edith but never does. This results in sibling tension and a full stop to communication that propels much of the story, and I think would also be relatable to anyone that has squabbled with a sibling.

To make a living Edith bakes pies, but it is much more than that. Edith is a fabulous pie maker, even winning third best pie in the state of Minnesota while working at a nursing home, among other accolades. Edith doesn’t put much stock into her renowned pie baking, preferring to spend time with her husband and daughter, and granddaughter Diana, wondering all the while how different her life would be if she had received even a portion of the inheritance. 

While Edith is baking pies and living a quiet life trying to make ends meet, Helen finds herself falling into the world of beer brewing. Fascinated with the process and flavor potential of brewing, Helen takes her inheritance and establishes one of the best selling light brewing companies in the country. She’s a very successful business owner, her beer company Blotz found in every bar and brewery of Minnesota. 

But of course, things begin to go wrong and change is inevitable. Edith and Helen’s lives are each struck by tragedy. Edith becomes more involved with her granddaughter Diana’s life as a result, and Diana is intent on learning the ways of brewing beer and entrepreneurship. Helen is forced to think outside the box, taking a different look at her successful business. It might just be possible that Edith, Helen, and Diana’s problems could have the same solution: one another. 

Before reading this novel I assumed I would be annoyed by the stubbornness of Edith and Helen when it comes to their relationship, or lack thereof. I am pleased to report I was wrong; this novel surprised me with its simple yet effective presentation of life, choices, and family dynamics. J. Ryan Stradal has produced a novel that I think is very relatable and understandable for many reasons. I learned about pies and brewing, Stradal’s writing clear and not overly informative. Edith and Helen, while frustrating at times, became fun characters to read. They have different approaches to life but share parts of their personalities, including their stubborn, get-it-done attitudes. The novel presents strong midwest women and is told from the perspectives of Edith, Helen, and Diana over the span of several decades. Stradal’s writing style is captivating; I got the impression he cared for his characters and was invested in telling their story, and has the talent to evoke setting and emotions of characters. The Lager Queen of Minnesota is a smartly crafted, unique story, perfect for those interested in family sagas, multiple perspectives, and perseverance in the face of opposition. If you end up reading The Lager Queen of Minnesota, visit the Joplin Public Library on April 24th at 6pm to hear directly from J. Ryan Stradal about his novel.

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Review written by Sarah Turner-Hill, Adult Programming Coordinator

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

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It’s little wonder that Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake made it onto numerous “Best Books of 2024” lists. Through the voice of Sadie Smith, a mercenary spy, we’re told of her infiltration into a farming commune in southwestern France. As with Sadie’s real name, her employer is unknown. But it’s clear that clandestine corporate interests view this commune as a major threat to large-scale agribusiness expansions. Regardless, it’s not the spy craft that elevated this novel to critical acclaim. It’s the uniqueness and depth of Kushner’s writing. Kushner primarily delves into two characters, taking us inward and—at times—back tens of thousands of years.

We know this much about Sadie: she’s 34, a Berkeley PhD dropout in rhetoric, and a former (fired) FBI agent. She’s also quite the user of people. To be fair, a spy is a user by trade. But it feels different with Sadie. It’s as though she disdains the subjects she manipulates simply because they are so easily manipulated. Sadie feels little remorse, for she believes most people are poseurs of some sort when they adopt their own respective identities. “People can sometimes pretend so thoroughly that they forget they are pretending. At which point, it could even be said that they are no longer pretending.” In this instance, the group Sadie pretends to join is known as the Moulinards.

Sadie’s contacts point her to a Parisian (Lucien) who is old friends with an influential commune leader. Within a matter of months, Sadie and Lucien are living together, moving her closer to the commune. It’s yet another easy exploitation, for she already knew Lucien “believed he deserved to fall in love.” At the same time, she accesses the email account of the Moulinards’ spiritual leader, Bruno Lacombe.

For a cult to exist, it must orbit an individual who alone possesses “the truth.” As with many cult leaders, Bruno rejects civilization, known among the activist communities as an “anti-civver.” Bruno in fact doesn’t even live with the Moulinards. He spends most of his time in a cave, worshiping a failed species: the Neanderthals, or Thals, as Bruno calls them. Ostensibly, Bruno steps out of the dark long enough to occasionally use his daughter’s computer, sending missives to the group on what he’s gleaned down in the deep.

Bruno laments the world that was lost when the Neanderthals went extinct. Because we know—and live—how the human drama is playing out, the Neanderthal world is a tabula rasa for Bruno, and for anyone who wants to cleanse their mind of commodified images. This deprogramming takes place underground, by the “modalities and visions that darkness” promises.

Sound ridiculous? Of course. It’s ready-made to mock. But does Kushner give it depth nevertheless? That she does.

As Sadie winds her way closer to the Moulinards, Kushner not only returns to Bruno’s disquisitions, but to the life traumas that sent him into darkness. After surreptitiously reading Bruno’s emails, Sadie questions whether the commune’s inhabitants actually understand and deserve Bruno’s insights. Such questions are not part of Sadie’s mission, of course. But, then again, you don’t have to be a spy yourself to see that she’s at risk of losing control.

Still, Sadie performs her role well, eliminating potential threats to her mission by offering preemptive threats, as she does to an older French man who questions her identity. Her return threat leaves him looking “dejected and childish, like I had just taken something that belonged to him, and broken it, and handed it back.” However, when traveling by high-speed train through the countryside and becoming startled by the sudden appearance of another high-speed train traveling from the opposite direction, we know it means more than Sadie being startled. A reckoning is afoot.

One early morning, Sadie looks outside and says, “For all its fame, rosy-finger dawn leaves no prints.” We can substitute “Sadie” for “dawn” in that sentence. With Sadie, how long can she keep these disappearing acts up?

There’s piercing intelligence in Kushner’s writing. It’s not just her crackling writing style, where a hill left devoid of trees via logging looks “like the scalp of someone with an autoimmune condition.” Kushner writes Sadie as a scary smart individual who knows there are always sectarians among radicals, where a division can be made that will kill the whole.

It’s clear to Sadie that the existence of a charismatic leader speaks more to what the followers need to believe than what the leader is saying. Taken further, it’s why people are so credulous of the fantastical. Cryptozoology endures because people want to believe that there’s evidence of the unexplained. Why are there still Bigfoot sightings? It’s because people want to believe in Bigfoot. Even Bruno concedes as much.

The questions Bruno elicits within Sadie are more complicated. To be sure, Bruno’s theories at least point to a fossil record. After that, it’s a whole lot of conjecture. But, in the end, we’re not really talking about Neanderthals. To Sadie, it’s like waking up in the middle of the night and confronting your true self. “When people face themselves, alone, the passions they have been busy performing all day, and that they rely on to reassure themselves that they are who they claim to be, to reassure their milieu of the same, those things fall away.” It’s “the four a.m. reality of being.”

It’s fitting that Bruno exists only to Sadie through his writing and that he doesn’t even know of her existence. When orchestrated events arrive and things become tense with the Moulinards, Sadie—detaching, as always—says to herself, “You people are not real to me. No one is.” This could have been just as easily said by Bruno. In many ways, it’s time for Sadie to step into her own metaphorical cave.

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Review by Jason Sullivan

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

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Adina Giorno is born in September 1977 at the moment that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is launched into space. Voyager 1 is a probe designed to record data about the outer Solar System and transmit that data back to Earth. Adina has been sent to Earth with the opposite mission.

When Adina is four years old, three important things happen to her. First, her mother discovers an abandoned fax machine in a neighbor’s trash can. Second, her parents separate — leaving Adina with her single mother and only a vague impression of her father. And third, she is activated.

Adina is an extraterrestrial, she was sent to Earth to gather information for her alien species. Upon her activation, she begins to dream of a classroom where these aliens can teach her things and request information from her. Adina also begins sending and receiving faxes from her alien superiors.

They want information about Earth; about the ways that humans behave and interact. They tell Adina that she was designed to appear as normal as possible and that she should report to them all of her observations about life.

Adina has an unusual way of looking at the world. She thinks deeply about the things that many humans ignore: the fish at the aquarium, the reasons humans have for smiling at one another, the volume of popcorn chewing in a movie theater. She relays all of these observations to her superiors.

As she grows, she continues to send these faxes back and forth. Giving information and receiving cryptic messages or non-answers back. Especially when she asks about the planet that she is from. She keeps her mission a secret from everyone.

When she graduates high school, Adina gets a part-time job working at a diner. She loves the repetitive work and her coworkers. She stays at the diner for years, continuing to live at home with her mother and sending observations through her fax machine.

When she suddenly gets the urge to change her life and move to New York City, her supervisors’ only response is “oh Nelly.”

Adina spends most of her twenties and thirties living in New York. She gets a job in an office and adopts a dog. It being the nineties, she also joins a workout studio with a high-intensity, motivational-phrase-using coach named Yolanda K.

Adina is working in her Manhattan office during the September 11 terrorist attacks. She gets off the island without incident, but it makes her reevaluate all of the relationships in her life. Afterward she reconnects with her high school friend, Toni, who has also been living in New York.

Toni is the only person who has ever seen Adina’s faxes. She now works at a publishing company and believes that Adina would have an audience for her unusual takes on human behavior if she would be willing to publish.

The book is a remarkable success, much to Adina’s dismay. The publishers ask her to do public readings of increasing size and the book goes through multiple print runs. As Toni suspected, Adina’s views on the world resonate with a lot of people.

For her book, Adina goes public with her alien identity. Although her audience likes the book, they are divided about whether or not they believe she is an alien.

Marie-Helene Bertino’s BEAUTYLAND refuses to make it clear if Adina is an alien or not. Readers debate the point, mirroring Adina’s audience in the book. A friend of mine recommended this book to me; she is convinced that Adina is a human who falls somewhere on the autism spectrum. While I do see that many of her quirks could be explained with an autism diagnosis, Adina never wavers from her certainty about her extraterrestrial origins. So I choose to believe her.

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Book review by Alyssa Berry, Technical Services Librarian

The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center

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Emma Wheeler has been the full-time caretaker for her father, who suffers from a traumatic brain injury, for a decade, while her younger sister Sylvia finished high school and college. On the day her sister is due to arrive home, after graduating from college, Emma gets an unexpected call from her manager Logan.

Typically Logan passes along writing opportunities like movie reviews and magazine articles so that Emma can support herself while also having the time to work on other writing projects that she enjoys in her downtime. But Logan’s phone call is not typical. He makes Emma an offer that she can hardly refuse – real writing work, doing what she loves – writing a romantic comedy.

Okay, maybe not writing it from scratch, but re-writing it. And the best part is that it is a re-write for (and with) her favorite screenwriter, Charlie Yates. He is legendary in the writing/television world and has won numerous awards for his writing. Emma is a super fan that has followed him and his work for years.

She cannot believe that she has been offered the chance to work with Charlie Yates. The CHARLIE YATES! After the initial shock and excitement, reality sets in and Emma realizes there is no way she can leave her father and spend six weeks in Los Angeles. She is resigned to turning down the offer; however, after she tells her sister about the opportunity, Sylvia insists that she go. She assures Emma she will stay and take care of their father. After all, it is her turn to help.

After some convincing, Emma is soon headed to Los Angeles, but after Logan picks her up from the airport and takes her to meet Charlie, she realizes that not all the things Logan told her are true. Instead of her dream writing experience she is soon playing a starring role in a drama where Charlie Yates, who turns out to be a grump, is refusing to work with her.

Little does Charlie know that Emma is not one to give up so easily on her dreams. Based on her conviction that love matters and that it is her duty to stand up for rom-coms she devises a plan for getting the script rewritten and if she can change Charlie’s mind about love, all the better.

Bestselling author Katherine Center has outdone herself with her newest book. It is funny, clever, sassy and relatable. Her character development with Emma and Charlie is superb and they both feel like real people. Both have their insecurities and flaws, but they are also likable, well–round characters. Even the secondary characters are well done.

This book was a delicious treat to read and I would recommend it to those looking for a romantic comedy without any spice. Emma and Charlie’s relationship is sweet and the witty banter and humor they have with each other is spot on. I would give Center’s latest addition to the rom-com genre a perfect ten.

Review written by: Jeana Gockley, Joplin Public Library Director

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The Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee

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Miye Lee’s THE DALLERGUT DREAM DEPARTMENT STORE imagines a world that our subconscious minds visit while we sleep. We do not remember this world when we wake up, but it is where we purchase our dreams every night.

The novel is set almost exclusively in this dream world. The main character, Penny, has just been hired at the Dallergut Dream Department Store – the most famous dream store in the world. She has some basic knowledge of dream production and sales, as do most citizens of this world. Penny is curious and diligent, and eager to get to work.

Dallergut himself is somewhat eccentric. He is the top name in dream sales and has personal relationships with many of the dream artists, but he also seems to be scatterbrained and flighty. His office is a mess, that Penny wants to clean up, but his ability to match dreams to dreamers is uncanny.

Each floor of Dallergut’s department store is dedicated to a different type of dreaming. From the generic dreams of hanging out with friends on the second floor to the dreams of swimming through the ocean as a whale – an extremely popular dream available only by special order.

Dreams are created by artists, who craft them much as an author does a novel. Dream artists usually specialize in a specific type of dream, even nightmares. There are many dream artists in the world, but the most famous are the Big Five, who the world treats as celebrities and Dallergut knows personally.

In this world, dreams manifest as small boxes. These boxes fill the various shelves of the department store where our unconscious selves can purchase them. Dream world citizens are also able to buy the dreams. They experience them as we do, the only difference is that they are aware of where the dreams come from.

Generally the dream world is very like our own: there are food vendors on the sidewalk, Penny lives in an apartment building, even the store is outwardly very normal. But there are also magical creatures roaming the streets, ready to give pajamas and robes to visitors from our world who arrive without them. Their world also trades in emotions distilled from the dream visitors.

When a person from our world buys a dream, they agree to a payment plan that will collect some of their feelings upon waking. These emotions can then be taken by the dream world citizens to feel calm or excited — or they can be taken to the bank and converted into money.

Each chapter of this relatively short novel explorers a different type of dreaming. There are brief glimpses into our world to show how the things we dream can affect our real lives.

It is easy to get lost in the world that Lee has built. Her deep interest in dreams is explored both in her author’s note at the beginning of the book and in the translator’s note at the end.

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Book review by Alyssa Berry, Technical Services Librarian

Family Family by Laurie Frankel

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India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. She was hooked from the age of ten when she saw the play Guys and Dolls with her mother. Her whole life was about making this dream come true.  She had to make a lot of tough choices along the way, but finally, decades later, her dream came true and she is one of the most well-known actors in America. 

But now that she has realized her childhood dream, she feels in danger of losing it. Not because she is not a good actor, because she is the best, but all because she dared to tell the truth.

The situation is best described by India’s daughter, “It all started the way it all started.  There was a tiny matter. And then it exploded.”

India made a big screen movie, and she did her best with the script provided. While she agrees it was a good movie, she also admits that some parts of it could have been written differently. Thinking this is one thing, but she tells a journalist and now a tiny matter has exploded and turned into a media storm.  

Despite the ensuing drama and threat to her livelihood and career, India refuses to be ashamed. She admits that families are complicated, but she refuses to compromise hers for the sake of her career, the media, or really anything. She thinks that she is justified in defending her family and her livelihood, but outside forces are intent on convincing her otherwise.

Laurie Frankel’s writing speaks directly to my heart.  It is witty, clever and humorous. It is such a dry, smart humor that I am reading parts of the text over and over, even weeks after I have finished the book.

She is a master at character development.  India is self-assured and poised, especially as a young adult, which she is for half of the book. She is smart, opinionated, beautiful, caring and such a badass. I love the spark and spunky personality that Frankel has given her. 

Plus, the supporting characters, of which there are many, are drawn almost as beautifully as India.  Three dimensional and literally leaping off the page.  India’s boyfriend, Robby Brighton, her mother, even her best friend Dakota.  They all feel like real people. 

While the characters are enough to make me giddy, the plot is the real gem.  The way it is put together is superb.  The story alternates between the present day media blow up to flashbacks starting in 1999 and moving toward the present, until it eventually stays in the present day. To say it is compelling is an understatement.  It is also especially tender and raw. Frankel explores many themes in her newest offering – families, love, adoption, self-sacrifice, friendship and parenting. 

Reading this was an eye opening experience, but not in the way that I first expected when I checked the new title out.  There are many beautiful and unexpected turns along the way.  Not only is this a great addition to the category of contemporary fiction in 2024, Frankel’s latest would make an excellent book club selection thanks to the various themes it explores. Consider adding this one to your list today, it is excellent! 

Review written by: Jeana Gockley, Joplin Public Library Director

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Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

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The unnamed narrator of Jean Kyoung Frazier’s PIZZA GIRL is an eighteen-year-old pregnant woman working as a delivery driver for a local pizza restaurant. She feels unmoored from her life – overwhelmed and directionless – and unable to connect to the child growing inside her. Until she meets Jenny Hauser.

Jenny is also feeling overwhelmed by her life. Her family just moved to Los Angeles for her husband’s job, and her small son refuses to eat anything until his parents move him back to Bismarck. Jenny is convinced that if she can find his favorite pepperoni and pickle pizza, he will learn to love their new home.

The narrator answers the phone when Jenny calls in and finds herself unable to say no to the odd request. When she makes the delivery, she gets drawn into Jenny’s life.

The pepperoni pickle pizza order becomes a regular Wednesday tradition. The narrator jumps for the phone all evening, hoping to intercept the call. When they discuss the narrator’s pregnancy, Jenny invites her to a young mothers support group. The narrator goes along, but the more time she spends with Jenny Hauser, the more she obsesses over the other woman.

She drives out of her way to cruise by the Hausers’ home. She imagines what their life would be like if she and Jenny ran away from Los Angeles together: starting a new life with the two of them and Jenny’s son.

The narrator neglects all the other people in her life. She comes home late at night with no explanation. She begins sneaking out to the shed while everyone else is asleep. She can’t seem to care about her life or her unborn baby.

Her mother and her boyfriend, Billy, are both excited about the baby. Billy wants to plan their future – he is even considering skipping out on his college scholarship so that he can take care of their new family.

Some of the narrator’s angst stems from their baby derailing the hopes that she and Billy had for the future. She is also afraid that they will grow to be too much like her own small, struggling family and, specifically, that she is too much like her deceased father.

When the narrator was young, she used to regularly bring her father home from drunken nights out. He was cruel to her and her mother, although her mother has many fond memories of him – things that the narrator doesn’t remember. He also used to sneak out to spend time alone in the shed. As the novel progresses, the narrator finds herself slipping right into the role he left behind.

PIZZA GIRL is a short and intense novel. The narrator jumps around to different points in her life, revealing new information as the book progresses.  It’s difficult to be on her side, because she makes such terrible decisions, but I still wanted her to succeed. I wanted her to find a way to be content with life she already had.

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Book review by Alyssa Berry, Technical Services Librarian