Readers will pine for a playlist of jazz standards, a double feature, a Mission burrito, and a ticket to SFO—past or present.
Young movie lovers discover friendship, glamour, and heartache in 1990s San Francisco.
Before tech took over San Francisco, before cellphones but after the terrible reign of AIDS, there were the gleeful revels of the ’90s. Tradowsky’s ornate novel is a love letter to a foggy, analog metropolis lit up with nightlife and art, queer friendship and desire, movie houses and day jobs, and 20-somethings aching to define themselves. Recently graduated film major Walter Simmering, out of the closet but unsure of his persona, is the Henry James ingenue or Dorothy Gale of the novel, collecting a vivacious entourage as he wanders a dazzling new city. He has never been in love, but San Francisco is quick to provide fodder for adoration and, in time, a neonoir science-fiction screenplay that becomes a clever counterpoint to the novel’s narrative. The reader will be as smitten as Walter is with his new friends, especially social butterfly Cary, a quippy chanteuse in menswear, and Sasha, lithe in women’s finery he also designs; they bewitch Walter with their breezy understanding of the nebulousness of gender and sexuality. Lawrence, an older gay man living with AIDS, is a link to past eras of San Francisco and Hollywood, while Jeff, a technophile grad student, already knows about cyberspace. Dreamer Walter projects his own mirages “onto the beautiful, gritty, eucalyptus-and-urine-scented streets of San Francisco” and mulls over identity and authenticity. At night, friends, exes, and crushes try cocktails, make out while “practically radioactive with pheromones,” banter, bicker, and guzzle classic films; connoisseurs of nostalgia and irony, they hold tight to “a golden age they were born too late to see.” Tradowsky, who teaches art history, devotes ample space to San Francisco’s showy architecture and the interiors of the characters’ apartments, workplaces, and nocturnal haunts. The novel is laden with period references, which will school newcomers to the ’90s and create a fusillade of associations for those who lived them.
Readers will pine for a playlist of jazz standards, a double feature, a Mission burrito, and a ticket to SFO—past or present.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781668057261
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 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
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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