A whirlwind adventure that manages to be farcical but also thoughtful.
In Murray’s series-starting near-future dystopian novel, a middle-aged Jewish Manhattanite seeks love and finds danger.
It’s 2025, and 44-year-old David Stein is searching for a suitable mate on the online dating site JDate after breaking up with his girlfriend of three years. However, due to “the new political climate,” he must get approval from the city’s Department of Health, because of laws put in place to ostensibly make dating “safer.” New York City has passed draconian measures that make it nearly impossible to practice Judaism or Christianity out in the open. During the Second Civil War of 2024, extremists burned down the White House, and a rise in antisemitic violence has made life dangerous for Jewish people nationwide. Nonetheless, David arranges a date in Central Park with a woman named Sue, and they both bring their dogs along. Things start off well enough, but then Sue reveals that she was fired from her job as an educator for teaching banned books. David and Sue hit it off, but they run into a major problem when Sue’s doorman tips her off that the Thought Police are waiting outside her apartment door; they’ve come to arrest her under a brand-new criminal code. The pair manage to flee to Long Island where a woman named Hilda runs a hotel. The Thought Police don’t have jurisdiction in Nassau County, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to infiltrate the area. David and Sue considering fleeing further to Vermont, or teaming up with others who want to stop the ongoing assault on personal liberties in New York City.
Murray’s brief, straightforward drama wastes little time getting into the story. The descriptions are kept to a minimum throughout: Hilda is described only as “about sixty” with “salt-and-pepper hair”; David’s dog is just “a little white Havanese” that weighs 10 pounds. The political dynamics are kept simple, as well: The villains hate religion, and they’re very clear on this point. Indeed, when Sue and David encounter thugs in Central Park, one announces the name of their group as “Americans Against Religious Worship”; at on other point, it’s mentioned that Christmas trees are routinely burned by anti-Christian extremists. The heroes don’t mince words; as Sue points out, when it seems that she and David are in imminent danger: “I just want this night to be over. It seems like it is lasting forever.” However, there are points when people unnecessarily point out the obvious, as when one man says of the Thought Police: “They are doing everything they can to make us live in fear.” The tone of the story leans toward the fantastical, and it’s a choice that effectively allows readers to consider the sheer chaos of the characters’ environment. The wildness of some plot developments, as when a member of Thought Police is stopped by Sue’s massive Old English Sheepdog-German Shepherd-Great Dane mix, only further serve to illustrate the absurdity of the dystopian world.
A whirlwind adventure that manages to be farcical but also thoughtful.Pub Date: April 8, 2022
ISBN: 9798449051448
Page Count: 114
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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