Clean, unfussy storytelling in service of messy lives.
Seven sharp stories that dwell on relationships both good and bad but never fully resolved.
In “That First Time,” the first entry in Coake’s bittersweet story collection, Bob, a middle-aged man in a dying marriage, learns that Annabeth, a high school fling, has died. She didn’t mean that much to him, but Bob was the first person Annabeth had sex with. Her friend Vicky, who delivers this news, seems oddly on edge about Bob’s relative lack of emotional investment, but the twist ending is both crushing and shows just how differently our pasts can shape us. Coake, who won the PEN/Bingham Prize for his debut collection, We’re in Trouble (2005), has developed a deceptively simple style that nicely serves his setups, which turn on simple tensions that grow increasingly complex. In “Waste,” a day laborer is joined by a new employee who looks remarkably like him, sparking questions about whether they’re father and son and about the fate of the young man’s mother. Lisa, the protagonist of “This Will Come As a Surprise to You,” learns that her abusive ex-husband is planning to remarry and is at odds about what she should say (if anything) to his new fiancee. The conflict is predictable in “Getaway,” about a wayward young man working at a summer resort who’s torn between his budding relationship with a girl and his admiration of the Don Juan who brings a new beauty to a deluxe cabin every weekend. But with room to play with, Coake can make simple conflicts sing: The closing novella, “Big Guy,” concerns an obese man (336 pounds at his heaviest) whose weight-loss plan opens new frontiers for him physically and romantically but leaves unresolved his anxiety over sex, accomplishment, and how to address past romantic wounds. Fitness can make us better, Coake suggests, but what if it just makes us better at cultivating resentment and spite?
Clean, unfussy storytelling in service of messy lives.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-883285-90-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delphinium
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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