MacLeod’s second collection abounds with crystallized moments in time.
Meticulous prose and unpredictable characters collide in these short stories.
When telling tales that abound with changing fortunes, personal dynamics, and unspoken mysteries, it helps to know how to set things in motion. MacLeod’s collection features eight stories total, nearly all of which feature a compelling opening sentence. It’s hard to resist a beginning like “I am not like other people. And, most probably, I am not at all like you,” or “This is about me and my sister. Or is it my sister and I, or my sister and me?” MacLeod’s stories abound with characters dealing with delicate situations, from the narrator of “Lagomorph,” who's contending with an elderly rabbit, to the characters struggling to play a familiar piece of music in “The Entertainer.” These are stories where precision and specificity are both crucial. “The Closing Date” recounts a murder from a vantage point some years later, and its narrator—whose family was staying in a motel room next door to the killer—moves back and forth in time, chronicling the events leading up to the crime as well as the effects it had on him and his wife. It’s the precision found in that story, and the way it moves between past and future, that best shows what this collection can do. The peculiar narration of “What Exactly Do You Think You’re Looking At?”—whose protagonist observes that “the things that attract other people do not attract me”—also offers a memorably askew perspective on the world, as does the phantasmagorical ending to the otherwise realistic “The Ninth Concession.” The payoffs don’t always click, but when they do, the precision is a thing to behold.
MacLeod’s second collection abounds with crystallized moments in time.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-3746-0222-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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
Has much in common with the author’s most beloved novels, but lacks a few degrees of warmth.
A native son returns to his upstate New York hometown, bringing along a peck of trouble.
In Pulitzer Prize–winner Russo’s latest, Nashville icon Tyler Sinclair is returning with his band, Stone Mountain, to his hometown, Stone Mountain, New York, to perform a benefit concert for an old friend, Tim Dockery, known as Doc. When the men were teens, Doc was paralyzed in an accident at the local swimming hole. A few years later, Tyler left town without a word to anyone to pursue what turned out to be a mega-successful music career. But his initial encounter with Doc goes wonky when his old friend suggests that Tyler isn’t universally beloved in his old haunts, and that some may even blame him for what happened at the Falls that day. Then things turn completely south, with the concert interrupted by news of a tragic death, followed by a fatal accident—or maybe it wasn’t an accident. Male friendship, flawed moral character, helpless and enduring romantic love, small-town police, class distinctions between neighboring rural towns—many of the elements of classic Russo are here, but a darker, faster-moving narrative than usual gives the characters less time and space to bloom in our hearts, and there are a number of plot points that don’t bear close scrutiny. In an afterword, the author mentions the novel’s origins as a TV pilot that didn’t survive the writers strike; that might account for both the pacing and the less satisfying character development. Fans would be better served by revisiting the North Bath trilogy or the ever-delightful Straight Man (1997), so full of the trademark Russo humor that’s lacking here.
Has much in common with the author’s most beloved novels, but lacks a few degrees of warmth.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2026
ISBN: 9780593805107
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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