A brilliant and keen work about being fully alive.
A novel about a day in the life of a studious Oxford undergraduate.
Annabel rises at the crack of dawn and readies herself to write a paper about Shakespeare’s sonnets. As she reads the poems, she recalls the advice of her tutor, a medievalist, to “spend as many hours as [she] could simply sitting with the text.…Look away from the text and out the window if you have to, try and pause your mind on the one thing. Focus on the experience of you reading this text now.” Brown’s gorgeously written debut is a hypnotic meditation on being attentive—on Annabel’s attempts to wrestle meaning out of Shakespeare’s poetry on this particular day and to establish a strict routine that will elevate her mind above everything else more generally. The only problem is that Annabel is human. She glances out the window and “holy shit”—the world is shrouded in mist and she’s pulled away from the sonnets to go for a walk; she must concede to bodily functions; she needs coffee; she’s cold or hungry or distracted by the thought of Rich, an older family friend who is pursuing her. In a sneaky way, the novel makes a passionate argument for distraction: While Annabel fanatically tries to discipline herself into being uber-focused, her imagination leads her astray again and again, especially toward figures she’s invented, in particular the “SCHOLAR” and the “SEDUCER,” two men whose identities she easily slips into and whose homoerotic friendship she spins out in endless variations. Brown’s attentiveness to the suppleness of language and the poetry of everyday life makes this slim novel absolutely transporting. In the closing pages, Annabel thinks, “Today has been—” and then she doesn’t, and perhaps can’t, finish the thought.
A brilliant and keen work about being fully alive.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780374613013
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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