A postmodern masterwork that outdoes Pynchon in eccentricity—and electricity, with all its dazzling prose.
Three decades in the making, Nersesian’s pentalogy—one book for each New York borough—imagines a very strange alternative past.
Roaming from the 1930s to the 1980s, Nersesian’s five books imagine a New York vacated after a bombing campaign during the 1969 Days of Rage and relocated to the Nevada desert. As the sprawling story opens, Ulysses Sarkisian (who shares the pop star Cher’s family name) is roaming, biblically, out in the sand. Uli, as he’s called, is amnesiac, knowing only that he has to get across town to fulfill a mission. Eventually he connects with his sister, who’s in the thick of a gang war between the “Crappers” and the “Piggers,” a contest that takes Uli all across a Rescue City in which, like the real New York of yore, nothing works well: “When the sewer got blocked and Staten Island flooded, the homes became uninhabitable, even after it drained,” a Crapper leader tells him, dodging Uli’s conspiracy-theory question about why the place was built even before the bombing campaign began. Those terror attacks are the product of another gang war of sorts, the very real fraternal struggle between Robert and Paul Moses, each of whom does his bit to destroy the old city. The story plunges ever deeper into the surreal as Uli morphs into Paul and vice versa even as Paul’s daughter, Beatrice, runs for office disguised as would-be Andy Warhol assassin Valerie Solanas (“I think we want to downplay that,” Bea says of the attempt). Allen Ginsberg, Jane Jacobs, Mark Rudd, Ronald Reagan, Timothy Leary, and other real-life figures play parts in Nersesian’s decidedly centrifugal story, which, though challenging, follows its own rigorous logic across a landscape of mirages and hallucinations. Or, as Uli replies when Bea asks him whether he’s figured out why he’s there, “No, not really. But I don’t know, I saw a lot of weird things.”
A postmodern masterwork that outdoes Pynchon in eccentricity—and electricity, with all its dazzling prose.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61775-499-9
Page Count: 1504
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.
Infertility, family secrets, and alpacas all figure in Quindlen’s latest meditation on mothering and domesticity.
Polly’s life looks enviable. Happily married to the adoring Mark—a vet at the Bronx Zoo—she teaches English at a private Manhattan girls’ school and loves her work. She has a protective older brother and close girlfriends, who’ve formed a book club where no one is expected to read the book. But Polly desperately wants a child and, at 42, knows time is running out. She and Mark have gone through endless fertility treatments, to no avail. Meantime, Polly’s friends have given her a DNA kit as a jokey birthday gift, and something mysterious shows up in the test results. Then, out of nowhere, a young woman contacts her, suggesting they may be related. That’s not all: Polly feels estranged from her mother, a revered judge who’s insufficiently maternal in her daughter’s view. Her father has always cherished her, but he’s in a nursing home now with a rapidly failing mind. And something is amiss with her best pal, Sarah. Quindlen’s trademark empathy is evident throughout, and her wry humor leavens some of the serious goings-on. Early on, Mark and Polly visit a fertility clinic with photos of babies in the waiting room; for Polly, “it felt…like a Weight Watchers facility with hot fudge sundae pictures on the wall.” Then we meet these charming alpacas, humming and pronking, on a farm run by an earth mother, whose wisdom will help Polly get on with her life. The plot swerves around a bit, there may be one surplus narrative thread (e.g., Polly’s star student Josephine running aground after graduation), and at the end, the author ties things up too neatly, pushing the “circle of life” theme too hard.
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593734605
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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