A vivid, savory blend of family saga, cultural history, and detective story, rich with urban life and lore.
Before sunrise one morning in 1978, in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, those living on a Livonia Avenue block are jolted awake first by smoke, then by fire, which engulfs two tenement buildings, killing one resident and displacing dozens of others.
Over the ensuing four decades, the block stays vacant as Brownsville undergoes transition from a crime-ridden, crack-infested neighborhood in the 1980s to a potential boon for urban gentrifiers at the turn of the 21st century. A stalwart constant throughout these changes is Lina Rodriguez Armstrong, a community organizer who is among the survivors of the fire, which she and other residents are convinced was deliberately set by Richard Wong, a Chinese entrepreneur whose immigrant father once owned a restaurant on the block. It’s history that piques the interest of Sadie Chin, a 23-year-old reporter for New Gotham whose family once lived in Brownsville “and was now so afraid of it.” As she ingratiates herself with people on her neighborhood beat, she’s jolted when one of the long-time residents accuses her of being the granddaughter of the same Richard Wong, whom he calls “a murderer.” At first, she thinks it’s a random senior moment. But she finds out from her father, poet Jason Chin, that Wong was a fake name used by her ancestors to bypass restrictions on immigration and that his father did own the Livonia Avenue building that housed the family’s restaurant. This news galvanizes Sadie into digging deeper into both the history of that building and the fire that destroyed it. She seeks help in this process from a wary Lina, who’s trying to mobilize her neighbors to battle a posh real-estate firm wanting to build what it considers “affordable housing” on the still-vacant stretch of Livonia. Savitch-Lew shows prodigious narrative gifts in this debut novel, weaving Sadie and Lina’s tension-filled transactions in the present with the life stories of the Wong family as it makes its uneasy and often heartbreaking way through a 20th century of world wars, economic upheaval, and racism as it’s enforced by institutions and perpetrated between individuals. The Wong chronicles interrogate what we’ve known as the American dream of individual achievement while fortifying the possibility of fulfilling our collective responsibilities to each other.
A vivid, savory blend of family saga, cultural history, and detective story, rich with urban life and lore.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9781668075234
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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