A sometimes striking, always sincere collection of narrative poems.
Kiskadee leans into narrative in this debut poetry collection.
This assemblage of verses sometimes reads like an updated collection of Aesop’s fables. An owl befriends a scared bear stuck at the top of a tree; a spider makes its web on the strings of an old violin; a wild turtle learns karate from watching the television show Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on a family’s portable TV—the 400-page volume is filled with such stories in verse. Many are almost novelistic, with named characters playing out dramas of connection and disconnection: A younger woman befriends the nonagenarian she shares a room with in a hospital; a man experiencing a rough acclimation to a new city finds support in his newly long-distance relationship; a couple meet on a cross-country bus and form a yoga studio together, but when they discover they can’t have children, the wife develops an eating disorder. Even the smaller moments that dot these poems are rich with character, conflict, and backstory, as when a girl discovers a frog in her backyard and is disturbed to find he isn’t moving or breathing: “Her vast five years of / owning / goldfish has taught her that the / absence / of these things add up to the poor / frog // being dead.” It’s rare to read a poem, let alone several dozens of them, that leaps so readily across time and space. Entire lifetimes can pass in the space of a stanza, as in “Bonfire”: “Ryan is not 5, 16, 20, Ryan is now 60 / and there are places on his skin that / is lighter than it should be. There / are places in his skeleton that / should be more / complete.”
The volume is divided into two books, each with its own title and table of contents: Then Again and And Now This. The division may be lost on most readers, however, as the two books are largely indistinguishable in style and form. There’s a Whitmanesque maximalism to Kiskadee’s verses, which sometimes stretch on for pages at a time. Sometimes, the poet’s figurative powers are on full display, as in “City Bus. Red Eye,” in which a woman notices how “The fluorescent bulbs hum like insane / angels / over / her head.” More often, however, the writing is functional and prose-like, chopped into lines with minimal apparent rhyme or reason. This isn’t to say the narratives they contain are not compelling; Kiskadee has a great sense for small human moments that are simultaneously affecting and surreal, as when the woman on that same city bus watches as “a stranger switches sides of the bus / to be next to another stranger” and the two strangers begin to hold hands. The poet isn’t afraid to risk sentimentality, which sometimes leads to slightly cringeworthy moments, as in the haiku “Rewind”: “War in reverse. Hushed / bombs rise skywards as debris / grows back into home.” Most of the time, however, the poems strike a note that feels, if not fully revelatory, then at least comforting in a way that many readers will enjoy.
A sometimes striking, always sincere collection of narrative poems.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798319698421
Page Count: 402
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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
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