Kurkov gives us a rich cast of endearing characters and a glimpse of life in an old city on the eastern edge of Europe.
A Ukrainian city finds itself under siege from a series of threats straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie or an episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!
“You know…some cities only exist so people can dream about going there,” one character tells another in Kurkov’s novel, originally published in Ukraine in 2012. “And sometimes the dreaming is more important than the going.” Now in English, his story paints a dreamlike portrait of Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, and a strange mystery that dares to be solved. Chief among the sleuths are Taras, a young man who drives patients with kidney stones on cobblestone streets to shake them out; Alik, an old hippie who joins his long-haired brethren every September in Lychakiv Cemetery to memorialize Jimi Hendrix (whose right hand is rumored to be buried there); and Captain Ryabtsev, a former KGB officer who once spied on Alik and wants to be his friend. Such eccentric characters are a Kurkov staple, and so is the surreal situation confronting them: Rumors abound that a prehistoric sea may be rising under Lviv, which would explain a spate of violent seagull attacks and a strong smell of iodine that won’t go away. The search for an explanation forms the backdrop to Taras’ tender romance with Darka, a currency exchange clerk who’s allergic to handling money. Captain Ryabtsev goes on a similar search, and Kurkov’s characterization of the captain, who lost his sense of purpose when the Soviet Union collapsed, strikes a sad note in an otherwise lighthearted tale. Though the novel isn’t overtly political, Ryabtsev’s crisis of identity echoes Ukraine’s more than 20 years into its independence. And when Taras gets home after a kidney stone session and hears the national anthem on the radio—“The glory and freedom of our Ukraine has not yet perished”—reading those words now is much more poignant than it was when Kurkov first wrote them.
Kurkov gives us a rich cast of endearing characters and a glimpse of life in an old city on the eastern edge of Europe.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780063354548
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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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