A fresh, poetically crafted, and self-assured collection.
A debut volume of short stories focuses on characters yearning for connections.
Loneliness is a thread that runs through Solomon’s tales. Adrift from friends and living solo, the narrator of “There’s Nothing Left for You Here” becomes obsessed with her unknown neighbors’ tumultuous relationship. She listens through the wall and even slips a note with advice under the man’s door. In “Appetence,” a man repeatedly pays for an expensive service that recreates his ex-girlfriend Ruth. The imitators learn Ruth’s mannerisms and wear specific types of clothing and a dark wig. The author’s protagonists are young and Black, which contribute to their sense of apartness. Youth is often a time of flux before life coalesces into a defined shape while underrepresented races can feel like outsiders in the larger society. In “True Blue,” Alexandria and Nikita bond immediately as the only Black girls in their high school freshman class, but Alexandria’s protection of her friend reveals a disturbing intensity. Even for those achieving love, its maintenance requires a delicate balancing act. A young couple’s relationship in “Seeing It Through” nearly derails after they watch a Nicole Kidman film that brings up issues of insecurity on both sides. Solomon’s writing lyrically shimmers, even in mundane-seeming circumstances. Nikita and Alexandria “rolled around in the grass; their bodies sharp with happiness.” A woman strokes a boy’s hair while “his body folded inward, slow, like a Venus flytrap.” The places Solomon’s characters inhabit aren’t always specifically defined. Instead, the author skillfully grounds her youthful players by naming the things they care about: the music of Angel Olsen that plays at a party and nostalgia-inducing movies like Roll Bounce and video games like “Street Fighter” that help bored teenagers bond. In a difficult feat to achieve, a character’s text exchanges are funny, natural, and relevant. In “Something About Us,” Connor’s incessant texting to Eden (“have u ever played firewatch,” “did ur erl piercing hurt btw I kinda want one,” “damn u sleep late”), although annoying, sparks their strange friendship. While portraying difficulties, the compelling stories often lean tentatively toward hope.
A fresh, poetically crafted, and self-assured collection.Pub Date: March 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781961897441
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Four Way
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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