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Enormous Wings
Laurie Frankel
Henry Holt & Co.
304 Pages
Publishing Date: May 5, 2026
I have been a fan of Ms. Frankel’s writing for a long time but this is better than anything of hers that I have read. It has depth, lightness, spectacular dialogue and wonderful characterization. Although quite honestly, the premise is somewhat absurd, you believe every word. And it is pretty frightening and current in today’s American dystopia in which we live.
In this novel, we meet Pepper Mills (yes, that is her name and it, among other things introduces humor which lightens up what could be a tragic read), a 77 year old who begins losing control over her life in many ways. She has a minor traffic accident, resulting in her children moving her into an old age facility. She makes the best of it, begins a relationship and then gets pregnant. That is the absurdity although it is credibly explained in the book. However, she lives in Texas, where abortion is illegal. This is a quite manifesto of feminism and examines the horror of what happens when women can lose control over their bodies. The good thing is that this book could be heavy and didactic and it is not. This protagonist has humor and grace and a great deal of gumption. This keeps the book from becoming a lecture and makes it something that everyone should read. It is dystopia without being dystopian.
How does Frankel do this besides having a wonderfully funny protagonist? She has incredible dialogue. I only realized as I was reading this that the dialogue in so many books these days is lacking and often I just scan it because it is boring. Here, I was going back over it and rereading it at times. Frankel has a gift for human interaction. Her sense of setting was wonderful as well. Even though Texas was portrayed as provincial for its views regarding women’s bodies, it was also a large and wonderful state with diversity. The protagonist, a transplant from New York, liked it there. Ms. Frankel gives the reader a great sense of place.
Ms. Frankel uses the dialogue and the plot to develop the characters in this novel. I really felt as if I knew and understood the protagonist and wanted her for my own grandmother. The other characters, for example her daughters, granddaughter, and beau were not all entirely loveable but they were human and complex and complex. It was a pleasure to know them.
I measure how good and engaging a book is by whether I want to read two at the same time. It is not that a book that makes me want to do that is a lousy novel or not a five star read. Sometimes, the reason I need to read something else is that the first one is too heavy; I need something to balance it out. With Enormous Wings, I did not want to read anything else with it. It was distinctly engaging but not so heavy that I needed relief.
Thanks to Henry Holt & Co., NetGalley and Goodreads for providing me with early access to this wonderful novel, both in electronic form and hard copy. All of the opinions in this review are mine alone.
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