A turbulent but often poignant fictional portrait of a life in progress.
A Jewish woman from Brooklyn struggles through her first steps into adulthood in Simon’s introspective novel that probes the definition of a life worth living.
Anita Rappaport is a newly independent young woman in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville in 1968.When she becomes a victim of an attempted gang rape while in the field as a social-service caseworker, she reassesses everything in her life. Anita backpacks across Europe, and later bonds with her friends in a kind of quasi-group therapy; she also comes to terms with a childhood trauma. Overall, the novel travels across roughly a decade of Anita’s life, chronicling the beginnings of some key friendships she has with other women: Denise, her longtime pal turned roommate; Shirley, a single mother with whom she later starts a business; Cindy, a work friend with a deadbeat boyfriend; and Marilyn, a quiet and tragic figure who worked with Anita and Shirley at a publishing house. The concluding scenes, set in 1976,underline the importance of these friendships; Anita asks the book’s titular question to those close to her, leading to a bittersweet ending. The scenes set in Anita’s youth effectively mull over the meaning of life, while those set much later question whether she successfully led a meaningful existence. Although the narrative’s time jumps sometimes give the work a disjointed feel, each scene is sharply focused and often emotionally powerful. Vivid moments of sexism arise throughout, as when her male therapist condescendingly simplifies her trauma, or when a judge initially ignores her personalized wedding vows, opting instead to read standard ones first, containing the word obey. A creative soul, Anita is unsatisfied with her editorial jobs, but it’s only when she’s in her 60s that she pursues a master’s degree in writing, which serves as a powerful reminder that it’s never too late to pursue a dream.
A turbulent but often poignant fictional portrait of a life in progress.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798897409785
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Sibylline Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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