Latest news with #TheFloatTest
Washington Post
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘The Float Test' is a family drama threaded with foreboding
Lynn Steger Strong's exquisitely written fourth novel, 'The Float Test,' is a piercing portrait of the Kenner clan, whose many conflicts recall that famous line from 'Anna Karenina': 'Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' After their mother — a fearless attorney and demanding parent — dies of a stroke while out for her morning run, the four Kenner siblings gather with their father in Florida to mourn her passing. Much alcohol and awkwardness are involved, as there are long-held grudges to tend to; for instance, no one is speaking to Fred (short for Winnifred) for several reasons, most having to do with her using the family's foibles as fodder for her four novels. She's increasingly dissatisfied with the whole business of being a writer; the books have alienated her from family and friends, and they aren't even selling.
New York Times
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Book Review: ‘The Float Test,' by Lynn Steger Strong
THE FLOAT TEST, by Lynn Steger Strong Writers are the worst, am I right? As a writer, I can say this. Whether we're following in the grand 'everything is copy' tradition of Nora Ephron or quietly 'borrowing' other people's stories, we cannot be trusted. But what happens when the writer is your beloved sister, and your whole family is kind of a disaster, with years of snubs, betrayals, and accidental and purposeful misdeeds between everyone, many of them aired in print by the writer? And what happens when, in the midst of all that, you have to go home? This powder keg of a dynamic is the backdrop to Lynn Steger Strong's latest novel, 'The Float Test,' which kicks off with an unexpected death. Deborah, the high-powered, demanding litigator matriarch of the Kenner family, suffers a fatal stroke while running. And so, during 'the hottest summer in the history of Florida summers,' the four semi-estranged Kenner siblings — Jenn, Fred, Jude and George, all middle-aged, with middle-aged problems aplenty — converge to mourn and help their now-widowed father. Jenn is the oldest of the siblings. She's the 'meanest and also sweetest,' and she now has six kids of her own. Fred, the writer, is next. She's left her husband, is living in a borrowed house, and finds herself unable to write anymore amid a crisis of conscience (and confidence) after the death of a friend. Jude, the third, who has secrets of her own, assumes the role of the novel's quasi-omniscient narrator, explaining, 'A lot of what I'm saying here I found out later; the rest, as Fred would say, I've imagined my way into , because why not.' Finally, there's George, the baby who brings to the table marital and employment problems, along with a Lhasa apso named Libby. If all that spiraling interpersonal drama isn't enough, I should mention that in the opening pages of the novel Fred finds her mother's gun. She carries it around in her bag, as we readers, in accordance with Chekhovian principle, wait for it to come out again. This, along with the mysteries of what's really going on with each sibling, and whether they can find a way to be a family again (also: why the heck did their mom have a gun in her closet?), adds propulsion, acting as a foil to the muggy daze of Florida heat and the suspended-in-animation feeling of grief imbued in the story. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
20 Books Coming in April
Flesh Szalay's new novel traces the life of a young man in Hungary who eventually makes his way to England, following him from troubled youth to immigrant success to tragic fall. Each chapter provides glimpses of the major stages of adulthood — first love, marriage, parenthood — interwoven with intervals of aimlessness, reinvention and grief. With cool detachment, Szalay offers observations on both the complicated self and the unpredictable world surrounding it. Heartwood Gaige's latest novel is an intricate tale about three women: Valerie, a hiker who has gone missing on the Appalachian Trail; Beverly, the warden leading the search to find her; and Lena, a scientist languishing in a retirement community who becomes obsessed with Valerie's case. Each is lost in her own way, and as the story unfolds, they discover what it takes to find themselves. Surreal Muse, creator, survivor, godmother of Surrealism: Who, exactly, was Gala Dali? Klein, whose last book cast new light on the designer Charles James, brings out the creative, tempestuous, multifaceted woman behind the famous husbands and lovers in this new biography. Swept Away There's a reason 'forced proximity' is one of the most popular romance tropes, and it doesn't get much more proximate than being trapped at sea on an unmoored house boat with the person who was supposed to be your one-night stand. Zeke, a grieving chef, and Lexi, a prickly bartender, must battle not only the North Sea elements but also their fierce attraction to each other in this high-stakes love story. Audition The fifth novel by the author of 'Intimacies' — one of The New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2021 — begins with a Manhattan lunch meeting between a successful, married, middle age actress and a mysterious younger man. Is he a fan, her protégé, her lover, her son? This taut novel explores the performances we all put on, consciously or otherwise. The Float Test Think your family is complicated? Meet the Kenners, the floundering clan at the center of Strong's latest novel. The family has been estranged for years, but after their mother's death, the four siblings — Jenn, Fred, Jude and George — have to figure out if they can put aside their differences, grudges and secrets to come together again. Eminent Jews Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan and Norman Mailer: What do these four figures have in common? As Denby, a prolific cultural critic, argues, they were all illustrious American Jews, shaping a cultural moment and changing America for good. Open, Heaven This debut novel by an Irish poet follows James, a 16-year-old gay teenager who is ostracized and isolated in his small English village because of his sexuality. That changes when an older boy, Luke, moves to a nearby farm. Each is looking for connection, resulting in a confusing, complicated, life-changing relationship that unlocks something in them both. I Seek a Kind Person When Borger, a journalist, discovered a series of personal ads placed in The Manchester Guardian seeking refuge for Austrian Jewish children in the years before the Holocaust, it sent him on a quest to learn more about these desperate pleas, one of which saved his father from Nazi-occupied Vienna. He tracks down the life stories of seven of these children, and in the process unlocks the mystery of his distant, deceased father. Fish Tales Jones's roaring debut novel, first published in 1983, is a tour of the bad ol' days of New York City and Detroit, with a pleasure-seeking young woman at the helm. Surrounded by hustlers, lovers and ample supplies of drugs and booze, she finds love in all the wrong places — until she meets her match in a handsome quadriplegic. Vanishing World The Japanese novelist behind 'Convenience Store Woman' and 'Earthlings' imagines a dystopian world where the human race reproduces only via artificial insemination, dramatically shifting cultural attitudes toward sex and family. When the main character, a young girl named Amane, learns that she was conceived naturally, the revelation sets her down a path of sexual discovery, which ultimately leads to an experimental commune. The Rebel Romanov When Catherine the Great handpicked a bride for her grandson Constantine, she thought the innocent young princess, Julie of Saxe-Coburg, would be easy to control. But Julie quickly tired of her new husband's violence and the cutthroat atmosphere of the Russian court, ultimately forfeiting her chance at the throne for a life of her own making. Exit Zero In these 12 darkly comic, surrealist stories, the 'Beautyland' author mines life's very real losses — grief, breakups, loneliness — through decidedly unreal plots: haunted farms, exes raining from the sky, perimenopausal vampires and injured genitals replaced with orchids. Great Big Beautiful Life Set on an island off the coast of Georgia, this twisty, grumpy-sunshine summer rom-com follows two story lines: the life of an heiress and former tabloid princess turned recluse, and the simmering attraction between the two rival journalists competing for the chance to write her biography. Notes to John Didion published no new work after putting out 'Blue Nights' in 2011. But the posthumous discovery of a carefully maintained diary from 1999 prompted her literary executors to put out this book. In 46 entries, written after sessions with her psychiatrist and addressed to her husband, John Gregory Dunne, Didion talks about their daughter, alcoholism, the struggle to write and her literary legacy. Matriarch Stylist, businesswoman and mama bear to Beyoncé and Solange, Tina Knowles grew up the youngest of seven children in Galveston, Texas, in a home that emphasized creativity and pride. 'From my first breath, I was told, shown and embraced into knowing that it is an honor to be a Black person,' she writes in an inspirational volume that remains loving, but discreet, about her megastar daughters. America, América This history by a Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar offers a fundamentally new account of the New World — and of America — beginning with these terms themselves, which once commonly evoked both northern and southern continents and, equally important, a set of shared ideals. Stocked with unfamiliar figures and historical details, the book portrays Latin America as until recently a source of productive tension with the United States, pushing it to adhere to the democratic values it seems increasingly in danger of abandoning. Sister, Sinner This vivid biography explores 'the dark and demented frenzy of scandal' that surrounded the charismatic Los Angeles evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, whose weekslong disappearance in 1926 helped make her an object of media fascination and 'the pioneer of 20th century self-mythologizing.' Girl on Girl Amid pervasive rollbacks to women's rights in America, Gilbert, a writer at The Atlantic, mounts a powerful argument that millennial pop culture 'turned a generation of women against themselves.' From the Spice Girls and Britney Spears to Kate Moss and 'American Beauty,' the dawn of the 21st century saw the undoing of much of the feminist progress of the '70s and '80s, giving way to the kinds of objectification, sexualization and infantilization of women that have metastasized into our current moment. The Fate of the Day 'The British Are Coming,' the best-selling first volume of Atkinson's projected trilogy about the American Revolution, dazzled scholars with its author's 'Tolstoyan view of war' and mastery of historical material. Picking up where that book left off, 'The Fate of the Day' plunges readers into the tense middle years of an increasingly bloody and expensive conflict whose outcome was far from guaranteed.
