A devious and deranged thriller.
Thelma meets The Bad Seed meets The White Lotus in this Covid-19-era tale of an elderly American woman's murderous obsession with a troubled young boy at an Egyptian hotel.
The 81-year-old Maggie Burkhardt left her home in Wisconsin six years ago following the deaths of her husband and daughter. Moving from hotel to hotel, she spent five years in the Alps, where she perfected her unseemly skill at insinuating herself into people's lives to cause the breakup of what she deems bad marriages. "I liberate people who don’t know they’re stuck," says the widow, whose methods include planting false evidence of infidelities and relating false rumors. After both partners in one targeted marriage die—the wife by strangling, the husband by suicide—and suspicions point Maggie's way, she escapes to Luxor and picks up where she left off. Convincing her fellow hotel guests that she is a kindly old lady, she sets her sights on a young American woman, Tess, only to find her hands full with Tess’ psychologically damaged 8-year-old, Otto. He incurs Maggie's wrath with stunts like stealing a precious ribboned lock of her husband's hair and pretending to be her late daughter on the phone. Taking heavy doses of antipsychotic drugs, she becomes determined to kill the boy. Guests who threaten to expose her turn up dead. Others are arrested for crimes they didn't commit. Returning to the setting of his gripping novel The Lost Americans (2023), Bollen takes the art of the unreliable, self-deluded narrator to new heights. Did Maggie really have a happy marriage? Did her family really die? Is she really 81? (All the physical stuff she must do would suggest someone younger.) The ending of the novel is a bit slack, leaving plot strings untied. But it's still a wicked delight.
A devious and deranged thriller.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780063378896
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 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
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