Honey by Victor Lodato
Published by Harper
Publication date: April 16, 2024
Genres: Fiction, Literary
Bookshop
As the daughter of an infamous New Jersey mobster Honey escaped her family’s violent legacy while still a teen, ultimately moving to L.A. and creating a new persona for herself. Now in her 80s, she goes back home in hopes of reconciling her family’s past, but soon realizes it won’t be easy. More importantly as the weeks pass and the drama ratchets up in Honey, Victor Lodato’s new novel, she’s left questioning why she’s returned to a place she spent most of her adult life trying to forget.
Honey establishes herself early on as a self-sufficient, slightly world-weary woman with a sharp sense of humor and very little patience for the sloppy ways of modern society. Traits I love seeing in older women. But this persona morphs into a woman planning her own death, then one unstrung by alcohol and Valium. This could be understandable, but the tempo of her emotions shifts too quickly and dramatically to feel real. At best my sense was that she was going home to find resolution for the violence she witnessed, the resentment, and the guilt she accrued over her years, living near and being a part of her family. But the way it impacted her as relayed in Honey was so all over the place with a mishmash of characters from a young woman, in an abusive relationship to drug dealers to transsexuals to mobsters; there was nowhere to land.
I went into this book with high hopes based on Lodato’s last novel, Edgar & Lucy. He had a way of delving into relationships and the interactions between people that I enjoyed because it made me think. Honey is beautifully written, but the necessary pull was never there. Even by the last page I remained unmoved by Honey’s situation. I could not find a place to invest, a character or story line that resonated or pulled me in. Lodato’s prose is still wonderful, but in service of what? Honey felt as if he himself were searching and even by the end, couldn’t find an answer. The character remained elusive to the creator, leaving me empty as well.
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*I received a free copy of this book from Harper in exchange for an honest review.*
I loved “Honey.” I was excited to read it after having read and loved “Edgar & Lucy,” and “Honey did not disappoint. As you note the writing is beautiful. I loved the characters, especially Honey, to whom I could relate, not because of her life experiences, but because of my age. Through her experiences, once she returns home, Honey learns to expand her horizons, to continue to learn, and to adapt to a world that is very different from the one that she grew up in and which she does not fully understand.
I completely agree- I loved so much about Honey, but didn’t quite feel as if Lodato understood older women at times. If that makes sense.