A trim yet potent tale about familial bonds and how tragedy can devastate and inspire.
A debut novella focuses on a Southern family upended by the death of its patriarch.
In her book, Roe introduces Champagne “Champ” d’Argent and her daughter, Bunny, part of a struggling Creole farming family led by hardworking husband and father Big Hank. Though Champ believes her best years are behind her, she puts a great amount of stock in her daughter, particularly wishing Bunny would leave their bucolic hometown of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, and become immensely successful and prosperous. This hope even extends to Bunny taking advantage of the area’s gentrification through an influx of wealthy, gay men. Ever sassy and outspoken, Champ advises her daughter to “flip a rich gayboy” to ensure financial stability through a unique marital arrangement. But upon the devastating death of Big Hank, mother and daughter become legally locked out of the farmstead and are forced to relocate to Newark, New Jersey, in 1976. Champ is intent on collecting a somewhat dubious debt owed to her husband by Jackie Russell Jr., a retired military buddy of Hank’s from their time together in the Navy. Bunny falls in love with her new home but is well aware of the city’s current state of “urban blight,” a fallout from the 1967 four-day Newark riots. She promises to “rebuild my city” with advocacy and volunteer work to fully utilize “the power to change the face of things.”
Because of the story’s modest length, Bunny’s ambitious vision of activism never materializes any further than her verbalized intentions to enact a new, people-forward revolution in Newark. While the tale is engrossing, it feels unfinished. Sometimes the personality disparities between mother and daughter become so wide that they feel implausible. This is most apparent when Bunny takes the soapbox on sophisticated issues of financial inequality and politics and speaks to her befuddled “backwoods Kentucky country momma” on the necessity for “more lanes for opportunity and financial successes in this country than there are right now.” Despite this, Roe does an admirable job of creating a sweeping timeline embedded within her novella. The action is confined to a single day when Champ asks her daughter to go to the local grocery store for her, where Bunny invites Jackie to dinner. Bunny then meets Jose, a dangerous stranger, who holds her fate in his nefarious hands. The author leaves her story on a sad and open-ended note, which is an intriguing choice for such an engrossing tale that truly finds its footing in the final third. Still, Roe’s moving, character-driven book is compelling, well written, and decorated throughout with authentic Southern Creole vernacular, which creates a distinctively unique tone and atmosphere. Both Champ and Bunny are spirited, captivating characters to behold as they transcend cultures and restart their lives after Big Hank’s death. The backstory in the form of charming anecdotes and humorous country-folk foibles fills in the gaps in Champ’s and Bunny’s histories as a restless wife and her impulsive daughter as well as detailing how Hank enlisted in the military. Overall, this reads like an impressive work in progress with lucid characters searching for love and meaning. The cliffhanger conclusion will leave engaged readers wanting more.
A trim yet potent tale about familial bonds and how tragedy can devastate and inspire.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 144
Publisher: dive bar press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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