An arresting attempt to put collective pain and healing on the page.
A visual poetry book that grapples with the idea of the end of the Covid-19 quarantine.
“Of all that can never be returned, / the opening represents a kind of iterability,” reads the epigraph to poet Karasick and graphic designer Lehrer’s stylized poetry collection. It’s accompanied by a quote by the late Algerian-French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who’s frequently lauded for his deconstruction strategy of analyzing a topic, such as art or politics, through a distortion or subversion of established narratives. In many ways, the Covid-19 pandemic has thrust deconstruction upon the world, unraveling beliefs and allowing people to see the world with new eyes—whether they wish to or not. Karasick’s poems and Lehrer’s images of textual choreography deal with what emerging from a long, isolating quarantine feels like “in the today of wild touching; / the today of withholding, the today of / passionate rations.” This book has two halves; the former features seven numbered “Openings,” and the latter the longer “Touching in the Wake of The Virus.” The first feels largely cerebral (“just / open my head…this open house / of whispered screams”) while the second feels much more tactile, grounded in the yearnings of a distressed body: “how to touch without touching…where touching is already too much.” Karasick often uses alliteration and sonic association, using language to represent this slow re-entry—the kinetic chaos of relearning one another. Lehrer makes a performance out of form, drawing parentheses and blocky black corners around lines that talk of “borders” and “evasions”; blackening the many o’s of “openings” and their associates into portals; forcing the eye to sweep across unpredictable, textured pages when Karasick’s speakers lament their physical alienation. The words curl, grow, shrink, and wrap around loops and illustrations that still can’t fill the pages’ stark white space, evoking a feeling of impatience. At a few points, the repetitive form is less compelling, but overall, this collaboration keenly embodies a collective trauma that eludes a singular definition.
An arresting attempt to put collective pain and healing on the page.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lavender Ink
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2023
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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