A smart novel that carefully considers the shifting sands of life.
A negative review and a heedless one-night stand lead to the cancellation of a respected newspaper critic.
After dashing off a damning takedown of a one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe—part of the annual summer arts festival—attractive, promiscuous Alex Lyons thinks nothing of spending the night with the selfsame woman performer, Hayley Sinclair. The next morning, Hayley reads the review, realizes she’s slept with its author, and sets off down a path of revenge. Renaming her performance The Alex Lyons Experience, she tells her tale of outrage and invites others to contribute. The result is a hit show and a tsunami of attention that goes viral, branding Alex as “the poster boy for indiscriminate sexual trawling. The man with no moral compass.” Runcie’s up-to-date debut cleverly—and comically—spans the gender issues exposed here while also widening the lens to include other topics. Sophie Rigden, a junior colleague of Alex’s, is working and living alongside him in the newspaper’s Edinburgh rental apartment, becoming his witness and audience (and the book's narrator). Sophie is both a critic and an obituary writer, as well as the breadwinner in her relationship with Josh, an academic, and Arlo, their 14-month-old child. Her background is very different from Alex’s, he being the son of a “national treasure,” the actress Dame Judith Lyons. Nepotism, misogyny, motherhood, culture, criticism, love, and death all come under the spotlight as Alex’s career sinks and Sophie’s rises while their relationship shifts into perilous territory. The clarity of Runcie's narration and her ability to consider both sides of an argument render the deeper issues digestible while, on the surface, the partying, drinking, distinctive characters and their predicaments keep the wheels spinning. It all makes for an unusual, thought-provoking, multilayered read that book groups will enjoy debating.
A smart novel that carefully considers the shifting sands of life.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780385551076
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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
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