Larger-than-life characters drive this charming, hilarious, and memorable debut.
In the dynamic partnership that is Hollywood icon and celebrity assistant, who needs whom more?
This debut novel, based loosely on the author’s own experiences as a celebrity assistant, quickly establishes normalcy as a fluid concept. Normal for Charlie, a news writer in LA, is defined by working the graveyard shift and regularly contemplating suicide. Open to any opportunity to hit reset on his life, he takes a lead from intolerable executive assistant Bruce, whom he met at a gay bar and now hate-follows on social media. Kathi Kannon, star of cult-favorite film Nova Quest, is looking for an assistant. Charlie soon finds himself far outside his comfort zone, buzzing the intercom of his childhood idol. His call is answered with a curt “HURRY!” and the gate opens to his new life. Kathi’s world is, in a word, chaos, and Charlie—now dubbed rather salaciously as Cockring—is tasked with establishing a routine. As in: “feed her, water her, medicate her.” Turns out, Charlie was not left with an Assistant Bible, the invaluable tool that helps new assistants navigate a life to which they could never relate. Deciphering Kathi is a 24-hour task (“KATHI: I urgently need teeth splinter barfs….ME: Toothpicks, you need toothpicks?...KATHI: Horble twat”), and their dynamic will be as amusing for the reader as it is all-consuming for Charlie. Duality is a key theme of this relationship, as Kathi not-so-subtly becomes a second mother figure to Charlie after helping him realize the absurd tragedy of his childhood (“[Your mom] died in a fucking church?!”). At the same time, entranced by Kathi's Hollywood shine, Charlie rationalizes the absurdity in her daily life in a way that leaves him blind to her shadows. Kathi and Charlie’s story is one of addiction—mostly to other people and what they can add to your life. Their story is also deeply human, relatable in the most unrelatable way. Bravo to Lane, who deftly navigates the complexity of inner and outer lives as well as the many facets of normal. Add this to the Assistant Bible: A famous person’s boredom is another person’s saving grace.
Larger-than-life characters drive this charming, hilarious, and memorable debut.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26649-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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