An affecting exploration of the shelf life of love.
Minds can change over time—but can hearts?
Two stories unfold in British author Lynch’s debut novel, a straightforward but searching story of family, love, and loss. Heron is a divorced older man who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis and reacts to the news by keeping to his regular routine of grocery shopping—until he deposits himself into the frozen food case of his local supermarket. After being hauled out of the freezer by market employees, Heron continues life in his usual way. He delays sharing his diagnosis with his adult daughter, Maggie, since some things are best “papered over.” Interwoven with Heron’s story is one from 40 years prior, when a young wife and mother, Dawn, encounters another young woman at a community jumble sale. The growing friendship between Dawn and newcomer Hazel leads to an “earthquake” when the women kiss and begin a physical relationship. That Dawn and Heron were once married is no secret, nor is the fact of their divorce. What is shrouded by years of silence, however, is the reason for Dawn’s disappearance from the family’s life. As Maggie slowly comes to grips with Heron’s condition and helps sort through, literally, the accumulated paperwork and detritus of a life, she is also negotiating her own way though middle age, haunted by a vague feeling that there is more to life than endless chores. Recalling her now-ill father as the parent who stayed with her and raised her post-divorce, Maggie believes she’s repaying a debt of love. Lynch subtly untangles the threads—completely severed by 2022—that tied Maggie, Heron, and Dawn together as a family in the 1980s and exposes the forces that cut those ties as she raises thoughtful and heartbreaking questions about what really is in a child’s best interest.
An affecting exploration of the shelf life of love.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781668078891
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 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 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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