Fiction roundup: Sophie Kinsella, Jennifer Gilmore

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'Wedding Night' by Sophie Kinsella

Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella
The Dial Press, 446 pp.
*** out of four

Lottie's first wrong move: buying her boyfriend, Richard, an engagement ring. Her next mistake: thinking he proposed ... when he just meant he was going on an out-of-town business trip. Her next, really big snafu: dumping Richard and hooking up with old flame Ben and marrying him on a whim. Fans of Sophie Kinsella's comic novels know laughs are about to ensue at the expense of our wrong-headed but adorable heroine. We're whisked off to Greece for a night of connubial bliss that will never happen if Lottie's practical sister, Fliss, has her way. It's a terribly silly but fun novel that's as light and bubbly as a glass of wedding champagne. — Jocelyn McClurg

The Mothers by Jennifer Gilmore
Simon and Schuster, 275 pp.
***

'The Mothers' by Jennifer Gilmore

Jennifer Gilmore mines her own experiences with domestic adoption for her third novel, an engrossing story of loss, love and motherhood. After several failed attempts at starting a family, Jesse and Ramon begin the process of open adoption (in which the birth parent or parents are involved), testing both their relationship and their emotional reserves. Gilmore does a wonderful job juxtaposing society's often unrealistic expectations of what a mother should be with characters who represent more realistic portrayals of what motherhood really is. The reader goes on a roller-coaster ride with the prospective parents and is left wondering: Is there only one path to becoming and being a mother?— Mary Cadden

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
Scribner, 383 pp.

***

'The Flamethrowers' by Rachel Kushner

The fearless if naïve narrator of Rachel Kushner's sensual, intense and political novel, set in the 1970s, is a young woman known only as Reno, because that's where she is from. She loves fast motorcycles and race cars and wants to create art out of Western landscapes. She notes it's "an irony but a fact that person had to move to New York City first, to become an artist of the West." In New York, she falls for an older and successful Italian artist who persuades her to visit Italy, where Reno is entangled in radical politics and a deadly kidnapping. The Flamethrowers' appeal is its dazzling, fluid prose more than a plot that turns elusive. Its last line is: "Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question." Kushner is a writer for readers who don't need all the answers but welcome the next question. — Bob Minzesheimer

Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel
Graywolf Press, 325 pp.
** ½

'Woke Up Lonely' by Fiona Maazel

In her ambitious if confusing second novel, Fiona Maazel wrestles with the central irony of modern life: Despite technological hyperconnectedness, people ache with loneliness. And nothing — relationships, family life, casual sex, 24/7 TV — alleviates this pandemic of isolation. The complicated plot involves spies, government agencies, dysfunctional families, hostages, and, yes, North Korea. At the center is a cult leader named Thurlow Dan. Offering to cure loneliness, his organization, Helix, is becoming a threat in the eyes of the government. The talented Maazel has plenty of imagination, but her novel is relentlessly bleak. For serious fans of experimental fiction only. — Deirdre Donahue

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