Wide-ranging tales united by narrators with shared histories and questions of belonging.
Short stories examine lives shaped by the Vietnamese refugee experience.
Lam and his family fled Vietnam in April, 1975, when he was just 11 years old. While the stories in this rich, complex collection cover a wide swath of subjects, this autobiography informs his characters’ feelings, their relationships to family, friends, employers, and homelands past and present. In “This Isle Is Full of Noises,” Lam begins by describing an island in the Gulf of Thailand that features makeshift tombstones and a grief-stricken woman. Nearby, two boys obliviously look to the clouds and see “catfish in mango sauce” and “roast chicken in lemongrass and chili pepper.” Death is everywhere, but hunger is more persistent. This land is a stopover for refugees of the Vietnam War. Once in America, one of these boys, given the American name of Koala (he was born Cao Le Y-Bang), tells an overly interested professor about the death of his younger brother on their journey West. The professor is, above all, entertained. Lam’s stories are filled with moments in which characters living in the U.S. are forced to reckon with history often too painful to recall, occasionally slipping into a past they never realized they were running away from. Lam’s inventive narrative styles add to the distance his characters feel from the world around them. “October Laments” is told through social media comments, videos, and flashbacks. “Love in the Time of the Beer Bug” features a son narrating the divorce of his parents as if it’s a boxing match. The book’s final—and most emotionally impactful—story, “The Tree of Life,” uses a funeral eulogy to tell the story of a remarkable mother, wife, and humanitarian. The unnamed narrator, the deceased’s child, describes how she lived and the good that was in her heart, saying “she was always an active agent in the face of calamity”—which, Lam suggests, is levied upon all who escape home in search of a better life.
Wide-ranging tales united by narrators with shared histories and questions of belonging.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781636282428
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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