The Maris Review, vol 96

Maris Kreizman

18 Mar 2026 — 6 min read

This week's theme is multiple POVs.

The other theme is air travel in America and how canceled flights and persnickety wifi can really throw off a newsletter writer (sorry this is a day late!).

What I read this week

Whidbey by T Kira Madden

An explosive revenge novel about the murder of a pedophile (sadly, not a billionaire), Whidbey is told, for the most part, from three different points of view: two are women who were molested as girls in Florida in the 1990s by the bus driver's son, a young man named Calvin who had the same floppy hair as River Phoenix. The third is Calvin's mother. When Calvin turns up dead at the halfway house where he'd been living, there is an endless list of potential suspects. But in T Kira Madden's more than capable hands, the story unfolds in a variety of unpredictable ways.

In the beginning the novel sets up Birdie as the protagonist, a 20-something film projector who leaves the Brooklyn apartment she shares with her partner of six years, to retreat to the atmospheric, desolate Whidbey Island with the hopes of finding some solace. She has tried literally every other method of healing, and nothing has worked. So as she attempts to unplug we learn about her past, unsure if the present circumstances will provide any clarity.

There's also Linzie, a former reality dating show contestant who has written a cliche-ridden memoir about her abuse. While she seems confidently ditzy/spiritual at book events and on news specials, when we look a little closer she is every bit as unmoored as Birdie, if not more so. Blatantly used by just about everyone in her life, she pulls out her hair and picks her face constantly and brings her own pillow case so as not to get blood on the one provided by the TV show.

The most difficult narrator to sit with is Calvin's mother, Mary Beth, who has to deal with the consequences when her son is murdered. Through her we relive how she devoted so much of her life to helping her son, a registered sexual offender who couldn't live within 2500 feet of any school. A night worker at a gas station slash convenience store with a Christmas theme, Mary Beth sees all of the good in her son that no one else can.

More than a revenge novel, Whidbey is a meditation on what other people want victims to be, the stories we want to hear, and who is more likely to be believed in the first place. It's also about how rape and sexual assault are the most severe but not the only indignities that happen to survivors without their consent. It's death by a thousand cuts, with people offering advice of all sorts, and some trying to cash in.

The final section has an omniscient narrator who lets us know exactly what to look at, and there is so much we haven't seen. It's a thrilling conclusion.

So Old, So Young by Grant Ginder

This novel was on my list but not at the top of it until my Penn alum group chat started talking about it. Then my friend sent me a screen shot from So Old, So Young about someone having a drunken meltdown at Smokey Joe's, and suffice to say I was hooked. So yes, my biography factors into this: I was particularly open to reading about a group of Penn students who meet five times over the years after graduation for various life events. This group is just a few years younger than I am, so I guess I'm on the older side of so old, so young – but there is still so much I identify with. Particularly the feeling that, no matter how old you are, everyone else at the party for sure has it together and you're the only one who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing.

So much of the trajectory of the characters in the book was mine. I went toPenn, then I moved to New York City right after graduation. Some of my college friends did too. I'm the only one who still hasn't left. Part of the reason: they all of have kids, I just have one very beautiful and lazy dog. We've all become very different people, but somehow we're always able to pick up right where we left off. Here's just one example in which we revisited our old Penn haunts on the occasion of our 40th birthdays.

In the novel, Mia is the character whose circumstances most resemble mine. She's a journalist turned author, albeit one who is way more successful than I am. All of the bros with whom she graduated are in finance or some other kind of Business with a capital B. Some of them face layoffs. She never does. God bless her. She is unlucky in love and that's her cross to bear; I was unlucky only until I reached the ripe old age of 35. We both don't have children. We're profoundly lonely in the way you can only be when you're a woman who doesn't have children who is surrounded by friends who do. Grant Ginder really nails that. He also nails how profoundly lonely it must be to be a woman with children. The grass is always greener, etc. etc.

So Old, So Young toys with the way nostalgia might convince us that we were at our absolute pinnacle at age 21, even though in reality we were probably not (once again I'm so grateful that social media wasn't a thing when I was in college daily documentation of what I looked like and how I was feeling isn't available). I absolutely identified with the angst at each stage of reunion. Maybe it's an unrealistic fantasy, but I also wish I could have experienced a little more joy in the various moments as well. So much of the joy appears to happen off the page – a fair choice for the novel, but I was craving some silliness.

ICYMI, What Was Lost: A Queer Accounting of the NY Times Book Review, 2013-2022

Last week Lit Hub ran a project that I'd been working on for months with Sandy Allen and a bunch of excellent writers. The result is What Was Lost: A Queer Accounting of the NY Times Book Review, 2013-2022, in which we commissioned 13 queer writers to review books by trans and queer authors whose books may have been overlooked during noted transphobe Pamela Paul's reign as the editor of the New York Times Book Review. It's an exercise in what Sandy called "thinking through what is lost—and perhaps can never be regained—when transphobes and their enablers rise to prominence as our most powerful cultural gatekeepers." I hope you'll take the time to read through all 0f the reviews and maybe even add a few titles to your to-read list. I know Beating Heart Baby is on mine.