Flawed horror, but suitably creepy.
A malevolent mountain terrorizes the village folk who live below.
In what might be rural Switzerland, residents of a hamlet face a quandary. Their animals have little good to feed on but the lush grass growing in Sasseneire, the pasture high on the local mountain at 7,500 feet. Two decades earlier, the mountain had given the townsfolk such a fright that they have avoided it ever since. But such a pity: “all that grass up there going to waste.” Dare they try again? “Don’t you know, they have the sickness up there!” “No one actually believes any more in those stories, except a handful of old men.” After contentious debate, they vote yes. Young Joseph joins a work crew so he can earn enough money to marry Victorine, who waits anxiously at home. Workers bring their animals up the mountain and hear mysterious noises at night, portending evil. They sense an undefined Him, aka the Other, or the Evil One. Indeed, something up there hates them, and that’s the nut of this spooky tale. There are lovely descriptions decorated by similes galore, such as “the air moved like when a bed sheet is shaken by its four corners.” Taken individually, most comparisons work well. Taken as a whole, they are like the effort of a writer who is trying too hard. Many passages enhance the mood: “The shadows had retreated into the objects that had brought them forth.” But there is a darker portent than the shadows. A worker gets a splinter in his thumb, and his body becomes “black and swollen.…He rotted before he died.” There’s a puzzling episode in which another worker, Romain, uses his ramrod-loaded rifle to shoot at and miss a jay, blowing away his hand instead: “tatters of skin…were all that was left of the fingers of his left hand.” You don’t have to be a gun enthusiast to know how improbable that is. And some readers might find annoying the apparently random switches from past tense to present. One example of many: “He gets up. He was ashamed for himself.” Yet there are great lines as well, such as “misfortunes marry one another, they make children.” That’s surely true on this mountain.
Flawed horror, but suitably creepy.Pub Date: July 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781953861825
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Archipelago
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
