A mixed bag of gags and witticisms revealing the hollowness of both victory and defeat.
In this cartoon collection by the author of The Slings and Arrows of Mundane Fortune (2019), the concepts of winning and losing are unpacked, tongue firmly in cheek.
“Those who are admired—whether for their success, brilliance, beauty, talent, or charm—are winners,” writes Hartz in his introduction. He adds: “They are valued, their faults tolerated, and their kindness exaggerated.…By contrast, the nonwinners—the losers—struggle for appreciation and companionship, and their mistakes are viewed without sympathy.” So begins this collection of single-panel cartoons and aphorisms deconstructing what it means to be a winner—or the opposite—in modern American society. Businessmen, athletes, and Hollywood stars dot the pages, as do the insecure, the poor, the ostracized, and the vaguely disliked. (One caption reads, simply, “Losers know they’re losers but not why.”) Hartz focuses on the ways society motivates us to be winners or to perceive others as such. In one cartoon, two people regard a mansion and a sports car, with one saying to the other, “All my fame and fortune mean nothing unless my brother hates me for it.” In another, two statues of Michelangelo’s David stand side by side, one typically svelte and the other more realistically paunchy. The caption: “Sympathetic. Not Sympathetic.” In addition to cartoons, aphorisms appear throughout the book, some funny and some simply thoughtful. “Beauty and intelligence are considered essence, not ornament,” reads one. The cartoons—drawn by Jovic, Wolfe, and Ramos—are imbued with frolicsome energy. Appropriately, the entries aren’t all winners—some fail to elicit a laugh, and a few are just head-scratchers. The cartoons have a better success rate than the aphorisms, some of which feel bumper sticker–ready (“EQUATION: Status = achievement X marketing”) while others could have used another draft or two. There are plenty of gems here that ask the reader to consider the arbitrary or downright unjust manner in which winners and losers are chosen. The result is a sense of nihilism that is half liberating and half depressing. As one cartoon featuring a mournful picture of a teenage nerd against a black background reads: “And then they came for me, but there was no one to speak for me because why would anyone do that.”
A mixed bag of gags and witticisms revealing the hollowness of both victory and defeat.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79759-770-6
Page Count: 143
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 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
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