Move aside, Bret Easton Ellis.
Think Eat, Pray, Love if the narrator were a wildly articulate and charming cannibal.
“Why, I wonder now, did I kill him?” ponders Dorothy Daniels from her prison cell. Imprisoned for life (plus 20 years), she fondly recounts a decade of killing her lovers, starting with the last unsuspecting victim, whose grisly demise begins with a delicious duck confit and abruptly ends with an ice pick to the neck. “Maybe he was my middle-aged madness, my little red Corvette, my last great gasp before I headed off into menopause.” Summers’ narrator is far from your stereotypical psychotic serial killer. She’s a 51-year-old bestselling author, revered food writer, and James Beard Award winner. Her work has been published in glossy magazine spreads “as slick as oiled thighs,” but those days have come and gone, and her “inevitable slow ebb into obscurity” with the rest of print media is looming. Instead of quietly succumbing to her fate, she discovers a new interest: “Giovanni. I killed him and ate his liver.” Like a lecherous M.F.K. Fisher sprinkled with the beguiling depravity of Hannibal Lecter, Dorothy travels the world, eating its food and its men, relishing every bite along the way—including a rump roast made out of...you know. Part culinary travelogue, part campy horror, Summers’ debut is nothing if not wholly original. Though at times it can become a little tiresome reading from the point of view of a full-blown sociopath, the book offers a perspective hardly explored: that of a woman who's not just angry, but violent. In a literary canon rife with novels glorifying sadistic men, that alone is worth applauding. Unabashedly and full-heartedly living out her id, Dorothy balances her most revolting qualities with a caustic wit, a kind of wink and a nod to readers when things get ghastly that it’s all in good fun. After all, she argues, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
Move aside, Bret Easton Ellis.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-951213-14-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.
Infertility, family secrets, and alpacas all figure in Quindlen’s latest meditation on mothering and domesticity.
Polly’s life looks enviable. Happily married to the adoring Mark—a vet at the Bronx Zoo—she teaches English at a private Manhattan girls’ school and loves her work. She has a protective older brother and close girlfriends, who’ve formed a book club where no one is expected to read the book. But Polly desperately wants a child and, at 42, knows time is running out. She and Mark have gone through endless fertility treatments, to no avail. Meantime, Polly’s friends have given her a DNA kit as a jokey birthday gift, and something mysterious shows up in the test results. Then, out of nowhere, a young woman contacts her, suggesting they may be related. That’s not all: Polly feels estranged from her mother, a revered judge who’s insufficiently maternal in her daughter’s view. Her father has always cherished her, but he’s in a nursing home now with a rapidly failing mind. And something is amiss with her best pal, Sarah. Quindlen’s trademark empathy is evident throughout, and her wry humor leavens some of the serious goings-on. Early on, Mark and Polly visit a fertility clinic with photos of babies in the waiting room; for Polly, “it felt…like a Weight Watchers facility with hot fudge sundae pictures on the wall.” Then we meet these charming alpacas, humming and pronking, on a farm run by an earth mother, whose wisdom will help Polly get on with her life. The plot swerves around a bit, there may be one surplus narrative thread (e.g., Polly’s star student Josephine running aground after graduation), and at the end, the author ties things up too neatly, pushing the “circle of life” theme too hard.
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593734605
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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