Equal parts ambitious and intimate, with enough humanity and empathy to keep weighty themes from swallowing it whole.
When the Earth starts spinning just a bit faster, three people from a small Alaska town find their lives intertwined with each other's and the fate of the planet.
Foster's debut novel has grand ambitions, which are made intimate through a close examination of the characters at its core. Twenty-year-old Tanner wants to escape Keber Creek, a town of 900 people, and especially his father, so he reaches out to a fellow Keber Creek native, Victor Bickle, a former Columbia professor of mechanical engineering, for advice. Tanner quickly finds himself working as Bickle’s assistant at the Circumglobal Westward Circuit Group, where Bickle has parlayed his internet success into a job as host of the company’s new series, Professor Bickle’s Science Hour, where he bounces between acting as a spokesperson and scientist. The days are growing shorter, though, and opponents of CWC suggest that its pioneering travel program, which can jet people across the world in less than an hour, is the root cause. The clear connection between hyperspeed travel and rapidly shortening days is clear to activists across the globe, and it’s a cause taken up by 15-year-old Winnie, another Keber Creek resident, as a way to make friends during a lonely high school experience. She and her friends protest this pursuit of profit over global stability, and her world slowly begins to find its way to Tanner and Bickle’s, with Foster artfully weaving their stories together. Winnie spends much of the book desperately pondering her existence in relation to her mother, who haunts the novel like a ghost after trying to take her own life, unlikely to emerge from her coma. She was looking, explains Foster, “to deny that she was in this world deeply and truly without a reason.” While a definitive reason never arrives, Winnie might take heed of one of Tanner’s observations during the novel’s waning pages: “In Greek, ‘apocalypse’ means an uncovering or unveiling; it means something brought into view.”
Equal parts ambitious and intimate, with enough humanity and empathy to keep weighty themes from swallowing it whole.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780802164483
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
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 touching portrait of courage and friendship.
A lifetime of friendship endures many upheavals.
Ellie and Homa, two young girls growing up in Tehran, meet at school in the early 1950s. Though their families are very different, they become close friends. After the death of Ellie’s father, she and her difficult mother must adapt to their reduced circumstances. Homa’s more warm and loving family lives a more financially constrained life, and her father, a communist, is politically active—to his own detriment and that of his family’s welfare. When Ellie’s mother remarries and she and Ellie relocate to a more exclusive part of the city, the girls become separated. They reunite years later when Homa is admitted to Ellie’s elite high school. Now a political firebrand with aspirations to become a judge and improve the rights of women in her factionalized homeland, Homa works toward scholastic success and begins practicing political activism. Ellie follows a course, plotted originally by her mother, toward marriage. The tortuous path of the girls’ adult friendship over the following decades is played out against regime change, political persecution, and devastating loss. Ellie’s well-intentioned but naïve approach stands in stark contrast to Homa’s commitment to human rights, particularly for women, and her willingness to risk personal safety to secure those rights. As narrated by Ellie, the girls’ story incorporates frequent references to Iranian food, customs, and beliefs common in the years of tumult and reforms accompanying the Iranian Revolution. Themes of jealousy—even in close friendships—and the role of the shir zan, the courageous “lion women” of Iran who effect change, recur through the narrative. The heartaches associated with emigration are explored along with issues of personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good (no matter how remote it may seem).
A touching portrait of courage and friendship.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781668036587
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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