Stephanie Kallos' Language Arts
Kallos' latest (after Sing Them Home and Broken For You) centers on a middle-aged man, Charles Marlow, a high school teacher, whose daughter is just off to college, whose ex-wife is engaged to another man, and whose autistic son is about to age out of his care facility. Meanwhile, things keep flashing back to Charles' childhood, where he learned the Palmer method of writing cursive and where something bad happened to a mentally disabled classmate. There is also a whole thing with a nun with dementia who's in his son's home. As always, Kallos' writing and characters completely drew me in, even though a reveal toward the end really annoyed me--it was just unnecessary in every way and felt like a major cop-out. And the thing is, I really loved how this ended, otherwise! Well, it'll be a good talking point for book clubs. B+.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in June.
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