This atmospheric novel elevates disparate voices, drawing a complex picture of community-focused life beyond the family unit.
In this lyrical novel of suspense, a grandmother searches for her missing granddaughters in an alternate, dystopian version of Detroit.
In Fort Détroit, a city that was never ceded by the French and whose urban center is roiling with toxic spills and lawlessness, grieving grandmother Gloria has moved into her daughter’s city-center house under the most dire of circumstances: Judith, the daughter, was found murdered, drowned in her own bathtub, and Judith’s daughters, 15-year-old Cassandra and Mathilda, 12, have disappeared from their troubled home. Gloria gradually gets to know her neighbors, including Solomon, a gentle, softhearted gardener, and straight-talking Eunice, who’s recently lost her father. Gloria pursues fruitless inquiries with the local police, and then, frustrated, she finally decides to explore the local park, Parc Rouge, basically a dense and quasi-impenetrable forest that’s rumored to be inhabited by ragtag bunches of feral children. In this case, the rumors are true: These kids look out for each other, but they’ve also created a rigid set of rules and hierarchies. And watching over them all, kids and adults alike, is a large pit bull named Priscilla. The story, told from the points of view of various characters, including Priscilla, encompasses speculative alternative history as well as a dystopian future—albeit with utopian aspects—and is recounted in sometimes-feverish prose that pushes its boundaries into poetry and contains both violent and magical elements. In particularly compelling, funny, and entertaining scenes, bedtime stories are drawn from a mashup of multiple fairy tales, delivered in the children’s grammatically free-wheeling slang. Though the viewpoint switching is jarring at times, the narrative delivers a warm and wild portrait of ragged but purpose-built communities.
This atmospheric novel elevates disparate voices, drawing a complex picture of community-focused life beyond the family unit.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781771965606
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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