An allusion-heavy story that’s ultimately compelling and absorbing.
In Hagood’s novel, a young aspiring artist loses her father but not before he tells her a long-held secret that sets her on a quest for the truth.
Dylan Cyllene, a Brooklyn-based high school student and amateur artist, is hit with two bombshells: First, she finds out that her beloved father is terminally ill with cancer; second, before he dies, he tells her that he’s not her biological parent. Thus begins a whirlwind tale of Dylan’s search for her birth father and her reparation of a fractured relationship with her mother, an artist whose emotional state is erratic at best. Meanwhile, renowned photographer Simon Ambrogio, whose work also includes monster references, comes to give a lecture to her class. This leads Dylan to new revelations. At the same time, she builds a romantic relationship with fellow student Shay, a girl who shares her love for “filthy creations” of the artistic kind. A massive art installation made of discarded car parts eventually offers clarity to Dylan on all fronts. Hagood’s book is part coming-of-age novel, part mystery, part family drama, and part queer romance; it hits a lot of notes, and most are the right ones. Its title comes from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), a favorite of Dylan’s that informs her artwork, and the allusions to that classic work eventually become repetitive. However, Hagood has crafted an engrossing story with vivid characters; Dylan, Shay, and Simon are effectively revealed as artists who are dedicated to a fault, going to extremes for inspiration and creation. At one point, for instance, Shay even jumps into the East River near the Brooklyn Bridge, which gets Dylan’s creativity flowing as she jumps after her: “I felt I might just sink to the bottom. Shay and I could both live down there together, surviving on a diet of only ships.” Other over-the-top plot elements include the repeated use of monster masks and a scene involving a visit to a cockfight, but these are believable in the context of the lives of artists who feel their work so deeply.
An allusion-heavy story that’s ultimately compelling and absorbing.Pub Date: May 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781952335563
Page Count: 254
Publisher: MadHat Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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