Smart prose blends youthful concerns with complex issues in a timely summer read.
In Kreuter’s novel, a Jewish summer camp reflects the complicated politics of the outside world.
It’s the summer of 2013 in Ontario, and Camp Burntshore, a sleepaway camp for Jewish youngsters and teenagers, is just starting to buzz with the arrival of campers and counselors. Even the camp’s meticulous program director, Deborah “Debs” Glassman,is caught up in the energy, taking her time to notice the “smell of the woods, the fear and desire, the startlingly fast, startlingly efficacious sensation that this was the best place on Earth.” However, the fun quickly ends for several counselors who are dismissed the first night for smoking cannabis. Twenty-one-year-old counselor Ruby Shacter only narrowly misses expulsion by going the bathroom at just the right moment. The camp’s surprising solution to its sudden counselor shortage is to bring in Israeli soldiers to fill in gaps and offer moments of cultural exchange. Ruby, who’s the treasurer of York University’s Students Against Israeli War Crimes and an outspoken anti-Zionist, doesn’t miss any opportunity to stir debate about the new arrivals. Her position starts to soften, though, after she meets dreamy soldier Etai, who claims to hate the occupation just as much as she does. He refers to Canadian Jews as having “diasporic weakness,” but with a winking grin that starts to win Ruby over. As flirtation evolves into a summer romance, Ruby struggles to justify her political positions and confused feelings—especially in regretful letters to her Palestinian best friend, Seema, back home. Then a second announcement from the camp’s administration sharpens Ruby’s focus: The owner’s son, Brett, plans to acquire undeveloped government land across the river, historically linked to the Black Spruce First Nation.
Kreuter effortlessly captures the strange, youthful energy of the camp, which is overexcited and pleasantly aimless, due to the abundance of nature, weed, and hormones. He takes readers on several bird’s-eye-view tours, dipping into the minds and cabins of various characters to expose their darkest and funniest wishes. Kreuter also plays with perspective by cleverly trapping into the heat of Ruby’s debates about Israeli occupation before zooming out slightly to remind readers of her privilege, as when Seema writes that, for her, camp always meant refugee camp, or when another counselor notes why she cares about Israel: “because the one thing I want this summer is to bang a hot Israeli soldier!” In the second section, the shifts between real-world and campier concerns make it a bit unclear exactly which follies that Kreuter is trying to roast on the campfire. For example, in the latter part of the novel, Ruby’s time at the camp centers on figuring out what the different counselors think about the land acquisition plan—and whether she can make a stand between rehearsals for a production of the beloved musical Tel Aviv! What remains consistent, however, is the author’s masterful characterization. With strong voices like Ruby’s to guide them, readers certainly won’t regret spending a summer at Burntshore.
Smart prose blends youthful concerns with complex issues in a timely summer read.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781770417632
Page Count: 408
Publisher: ECW Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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