NewPages Blog :: Books

Review by Kevin Brown

There’s no way to read Claire Lombardo’s second novel without having the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” running through one’s head, and it’s clear she means for the reader to do so. The reader follows Julia through three significant periods in her life — her childhood, especially her teenage years; the first years with her son, Ben; Ben’s marriage to Sunny — though the novel doesn’t move chronologically through her life. Julia is wondering, as David Byrne sang, “Well, how did I get here?” The reader not only asks that question, but also where and how Julia will end up.

While I was disappointed with the answer to those questions, as the ending felt too pat, too untrue to the messiness of life, Lombardo crafts Julia’s life — as well as the lives of those around her — so clearly that I cared about the answer throughout most of the novel. Julia and Mark’s marriage seems in danger of ending not once, but several times; Julia has a strained relationship with her mother, for good reasons; Julia is surprised (and not in a positive manner) by Ben’s announcement that he and Sunny are having a child and getting married; Julia struggles in dealing with her teenage daughter, Alma, who is dealing with the college admissions process.

The novel is clear-eyed about the problems in all of those relationships, in addition to some others, which is where the characters live and breathe. Life is found in the struggles, as well as the moments of joy, especially in the quotidian nature of life, which is, as the title reminds readers, the “same as it ever was.” I enjoyed spending time with these characters, not because they were perfect, but because they felt real. And that’s a good way to let the days go by, at least once in a lifetime.

Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo. Doubleday, April 2025.

Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.

Review by Aiden Hunt

With acrimonious relations going back almost 50 years, it can be easy to forget that the United States and Iran were once close allies. After a CIA-backed military coup granted shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi authoritarian powers in 1953, U.S. presidents and policymakers deemed Iran a source of Middle East stability for a quarter century and growing demand for oil during the 1970s made Iran’s elite rich. By the end of that decade, a dying shah’s admittance to American exile for cancer treatment triggered a diplomatic hostage crisis and the end of the special relationship.

“Collapse on the magnitude of that which occurred in Imperial Iran in the 1970s simply cannot be attributable to the actions of one king,” Scott Anderson writes in his new book, King of Kings, explaining that the incompetence or corruption of many actors played a role in the Iranian Revolution. Anderson provides a compelling narrative relying on previous research, documentation, and his own interviews with inside sources like Americans employed in Iran at the time and the shah’s now octogenarian widow, Farah, still living in American exile.

Though a hostile government prevents a truly clear view of the event, King of Kings succeeds in giving Western readers a picture of a revolution that’s had great consequences for both the Middle East and the West to this day. It may not be light reading, but those looking for a better understanding of how modern Iran came to be will certainly benefit.

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson. Doubleday, September 2025.

Reviewer bio: Aiden Hunt is a writer, editor, and literary critic based in the Philadelphia, PA suburbs. He is the creator and editor of the Philly Chapbook Review, and his critical work has appeared in Fugue, The Rumpus, Jacket2, and The Adroit Journal, among other venues.

Review by Eleanor J. Bader

Cursed Daughters, Oyinkan Braithwaite’s highly anticipated second novel [following 2018’s My Sister, The Serial Killer], brings readers into the middle-to-upper-class community of Lagos, Nigeria, and its adjacent suburbs and tells a complicated story that questions the role of fate in determining how our lives unfold.

The story centers on the economically comfortable Falodin family, whose older generation believes that the household’s women are plagued by a long-standing curse that prohibits them from forming lasting heterosexual relationships. For cousins Ebun and Monife, both of whom consider themselves modern and well-educated, the idea that they can be punished for the sins of past generations seems preposterous. At the same time, their intellectual skepticism runs head-on into tradition, and when Monife unexpectedly dies at age 25, her death leaves 21-year-old Ebun scrambling to make sense of what has happened.

Her difficulties are made worse by the premature birth of her daughter, Eniiye, on the day of Monife’s burial. Moreover, her emotional upheaval is exacerbated by the fact that Eniiye looks shockingly similar to Monife, a reality that has neighbors, family, and friends dubbing the child a reincarnation. This not only leaves Ebun reeling but puts tremendous pressure on the child who wants little more than to be herself.

It’s a soap opera, for sure, but Braithwaite is a spectacular writer who manages to make this a compelling and satisfying intergenerational drama. Although some of what transpires is predictable, the deft handling of Eniiye’s coming of age and her subsequent pursuit of romance is touching and emotionally resonant. Cursed Daughters is told in the alternating voices of Ebun, Eniiye, and Monife and moves back and forth between several decades. But as the puzzle pieces come into frame, secrets, silences, and superstitions are parsed and upended. The end result is that Eniiye does what her foremothers could not and emerges as an autonomous, bold, and independent woman. It’s a transition to cheer.

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite. Doubleday, November 2025.

Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.