Disturbing throughout, ultimately in ways that undermine the author’s core message.
A sometimes-revelatory exploration of embodiment and desire.
“No sooner did I come into being than I began to expand endlessly. I overflowed every space in which life had tried to contain me. I had no limits.” The protagonist and narrator of this slim, problematic book is 22 pounds at birth and just keeps growing. Her mother abandons her when she’s an infant. Her father dedicates himself to feeding her. He also creates a mythical double for the protagonist: A twin she devoured in utero. This twin—incorporeal and therefore ideal—haunts and taunts the protagonist. This is less a traditional novel than an extended rant with narrative digressions, but it is—at the beginning, anyway—horribly compelling. The ghost twin is a brilliant metaphor for the sense that so many women and girls have that their true self is thin and perfect while their actual body is a cruel lie. The protagonist herself serves as a monstrous other for her peers and, ultimately, for the whole world of people who live online. They judge her body, mock her body, and use her body to reassure themselves about their own bodies. The book takes a turn when Devi seems to take the side of the oppressors. “I’m immoderation made manifest, a terror and a death spiral.” This is the narrator describing herself as the embodiment of a global society afraid of freedom and feeding from “the dual teats of gluttony and pornography.” Later, the protagonist will declare that she is “proof that human agency is an aberration,” suggesting that her body is the result of an addiction to excess. In a lengthy passage that takes place inside a toilet stall in her school bathroom, the protagonist imagines herself—rather longingly—as a piece of shit. Devi is angry about things it’s reasonable to be angry about. Fat girls have been an all-encompassing, all-consuming symbol of excess for quite some time. Making the fat girl eat her own flesh while livestreaming might not be the innovative flex Devi thinks it is.
Disturbing throughout, ultimately in ways that undermine the author’s core message.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9780374619176
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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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