October 1, 2022
It's the 1970s, and Los Angeles-based single-mother Diane Aziz has always worked to give her children what she never had; having illegally secured them spots at a classy public school, she's just dropped older son Walter at Berkeley. Then, deeply depressed, she enters a California state hospital as daughter Lina dreams of attending an Ivy League school like her friends and younger son Donny slides into beach going and drug use. Acclaimed novelist Simpson (Off Keck Road, Casebook) is publisher of the Paris Review.
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January 23, 2023
Simpson (Casebook) follows the paths of three siblings after their mother’s mental health breakdown in her well-drawn latest. After Walter Aziz, the oldest, leaves Los Angeles to attend UC Berkeley, Diane, a single mother, overwhelmed by the depression that has stalked her for most of her life, stops going to work and eventually signs herself into a psychiatric hospital, leaving behind Walter’s sister, Lina, a high school senior, and younger brother, Donnie. As their mother’s best friend steps up to take care of the children, they grapple with how to proceed. Lina works in an ice-cream shop and wants to head east for college; Walter, having discovered a passion for architecture, questions whether he can pursue a field in which aesthetics are valued above utility; and Donnie drifts aimlessly along Southern California’s beaches. Their mother’s breakdown distances them emotionally from their peers. Walter, invited to attend a sorority party on campus, gives his regrets, overwhelmed by a sense of obligation to his family: “I have a smaller world now.” Lina, meanwhile, envies the “breeziness” exuding from the homes of her more stable friends. Simpson foregoes surprises or dramatic turns, drawing readers instead with deep and tender considerations of her characters, as they’re forced to learn hard truths while still in the prime of their youths. Fans of family chronicles will not be disappointed.
February 15, 2023
As a single mother of three, Diane does everything she can to provide an upwardly mobile life, even going so far as to falsify the family's home address so Walter, Lina, and Donny can attend a better school. But the strain of keeping up appearances in class-conscious Los Angeles of the 1970s is staggering, and once Walter is safely sent off to UC Berkeley, Diane suffers a mental breakdown. While Walter cobbles together odd jobs and aid packages to finance his education, Lina and Donny still must navigate their own ways to adulthood, accomplishing much through the selfless generosity of Diane's best friend, Julie, who cares for them in all the ways their mother can't. Lina's goals of college and an art career look to be permanently derailed until a team of mentors helps her get into Barnard College, while Donny loses himself to street life and addiction. Acclaimed novelist Simpson's latest is a vast and multifaceted tale of one family's mutual dedication and loyalty that powerfully demonstrates the importance of community.
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Starred review from March 1, 2023
Simpson is an artist of the family saga, the multigenerational narrative. In her seventh novel, she doesn't revisit this territory so much as animate it anew. Beginning in 1972 and continuing into the 1980s, the book tells the story of the Aziz family of Los Angeles: Diane, a single mother, and her three children, Walter, Lina, and Donnie. Each in his or her own way is a central character. That's because this novel finds its heart not with any one figure but rather with the collective as Simpson moves from life to life, point of view to point of view, offering a kaleidoscopic portrait of a clan of outsiders remaking itself again and again. Diane suffers from debilitating depression, which kicks in after she drops Walter off for his freshman year at UC Berkeley; back in Southern California, she must be institutionalized. All of a sudden, her children are left to fend for themselves, with mixed results. The truth, however, is that they've been on their own for quite some time. Essentially abandoned by their father--"I think of him as our biological father," Walter reflects, "No savior"--they must figure out how to pay their bills and keep themselves in school. But although their lives are often fraught with turmoil, Simpson has something more than degradation on her mind. Instead, she means to explore perseverance, the ability to survive. And not just to survive, but also to thrive, as the three siblings grow into their adult selves. "An autumn night," she writes on the final page, quoting the haiku writer Basho, "Don't think your life / Didn't matter." It may as well be the novel's epigraph. Simpson beautifully explores the sacrifices that keep a family together even when it's coming apart.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.