Review by Kevin Brown

Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy’s newest novel, creates Shearwater, an island not far off the coast of Antarctica (based on Macquarie Island, she says in a note at the end), where a family of four lives in a lighthouse. There’s a seed vault there, which they’re supposed to load up and take on a ship which will arrive in six weeks, as the sea will soon engulf the island. While there’s no clear date as to when the novel takes place, the world outside seems to be even more ravaged by climate change than our current world, a reality that serves as the backdrop for everything that happens.

There are ghosts haunting this island, whether the death of the mother of the three children or the violent history of the island, as men used it as a place to hunt whales, club seals, and kill penguins, almost to extinction. The father, Dominic, is haunted by his wife’s death, and his children often overhear him talking to her. Fen, the daughter, is so frightened of something, she sleeps in a boathouse or on the shore of the sea. Raff, the oldest son, has a violent temper, which his father tries to channel into punching a makeshift boxing bag in the top of the lighthouse. The youngest son, Orly, is obsessed with the seeds and can list information and facts about many that most people have never heard of.

The family seems to be functioning, even after the researchers have left, until a woman washes onto the shore. Rowan’s appearance is mysterious, as there shouldn’t be any ship in the area, so the family tries to understand her while she asks questions about the situation there. The mysteries that underlie all five of these characters drive the tension in this novel, as they move from mistrust to building a type of family, which the truth threatens to undercut. In the same way that all of the characters in this novel must face the realities of their lives, McConaghy wants the readers to own up to the realities of climate change. In each case, characters and readers will need to change their approach to the world to have any chance of survival.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. Flatiron Books, March 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 Eleanor J. Bader

The folk music scene of the 1960s through 1990s is as much a character in The Singer Sisters as the many members of the large family whose struggles and conflicts it chronicles. They’re a diverse lot and include once-popular singer Judie Zingerman, her daughter Emma, son Leon, ex-husband Dave Cantor, and sister Sylvia, the other half of the renowned Singer Sisters.

As the story unfolds, generational conflicts emerge and long-held family secrets begin the rise to the surface. The result is a rich and complicated multi-tiered family story, in which bonds are repeatedly tested but never completely unravel. This makes the novel an intergenerational love story, with wholly believable characters whose flaws and insecurities are writ large.

Issues of reproductive justice are skillfully woven into the story, and the political milieu of the times becomes an important, but subtle, backdrop for what is revealed. This is a story about the big stuff – life, death, career aspirations, sexual agency, parenting – but all are handled with a light enough touch to make this a debut to savor.

In addition, insight into what it takes to be a successful musician, the constant travel, the frayed relationships, and the pressure to keep audiences engaged and entertained add heft to the book. Highly recommended.

The Singer Sisters by Sarah Seltzer. Flatiron Books, August 2024.

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.

Review by Kevin Brown

Xochitl Gonzalez’s second novel, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, tells two parallel stories about women in the art world. The titular Anita de Monte is a Latina artist on the rise in the middle of the 1980s, but she’s married to Jack Martin, a well-established, minimalist artist known as much for his affairs as his art. Raquel Toro is a college student at Brown University in the late 1990s, just beginning work on her undergraduate thesis, which will focus on Jack Martin. Her experience as a Latina in a white-dominated university and department has led to her alienation, both from those around her and from her culture and background.

Anita disappears from art history after her death until Raquel, with guidance from Belinda—the director of the Rhode Island School of Design’s gallery, as well as another woman of color—rediscovers Anita’s work, as well as more details about her death. Raquel’s life had already begun to mirror Anita’s, as she begins dating Nick, a graduating senior with a promising art career before him, though it’s driven more by connections than talent. Though Nick is not a mirror for Jack, he is an echo, a reminder of the men who have tried to control female artists and the narrative of art history.

Raquel’s discovery of Anita de Monte not only resurrects Anita’s reputation, but also helps Raquel begin to discover who she is and who she can be. Through her two main characters, Gonzalez crafts realistic portrayals of the challenges women have and continue to face, along with the importance of role models as one means of pushing through those struggles.

Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez. Flatiron Books, March 2024.

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. Twitter @kevinbrownwrite