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
A touching portrait of courage and friendship.
A lifetime of friendship endures many upheavals.
Ellie and Homa, two young girls growing up in Tehran, meet at school in the early 1950s. Though their families are very different, they become close friends. After the death of Ellie’s father, she and her difficult mother must adapt to their reduced circumstances. Homa’s more warm and loving family lives a more financially constrained life, and her father, a communist, is politically active—to his own detriment and that of his family’s welfare. When Ellie’s mother remarries and she and Ellie relocate to a more exclusive part of the city, the girls become separated. They reunite years later when Homa is admitted to Ellie’s elite high school. Now a political firebrand with aspirations to become a judge and improve the rights of women in her factionalized homeland, Homa works toward scholastic success and begins practicing political activism. Ellie follows a course, plotted originally by her mother, toward marriage. The tortuous path of the girls’ adult friendship over the following decades is played out against regime change, political persecution, and devastating loss. Ellie’s well-intentioned but naïve approach stands in stark contrast to Homa’s commitment to human rights, particularly for women, and her willingness to risk personal safety to secure those rights. As narrated by Ellie, the girls’ story incorporates frequent references to Iranian food, customs, and beliefs common in the years of tumult and reforms accompanying the Iranian Revolution. Themes of jealousy—even in close friendships—and the role of the shir zan, the courageous “lion women” of Iran who effect change, recur through the narrative. The heartaches associated with emigration are explored along with issues of personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good (no matter how remote it may seem).
A touching portrait of courage and friendship.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781668036587
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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