An intelligent and vivid consideration of the embodiedness of memory, if not a particularly engrossing story.
An aging trustee of a patrician boys’ school looks back on his years there.
This slim new novel from Ozick, a nonagenarian giant of Jewish American writing, is presented as the school-days memoirs of Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie, a trustee of Temple Academy for Boys. His entry is purportedly only one part of a project he has undertaken along with the school’s other trustees (all of whom, including him, are WASPs). As he reflects on what the school meant to him, the journal entry–style vignettes are interrupted more and more frequently due to his ailments and other aspects of aging—which is perhaps Ozick’s real theme here. Throughout the novella, memory is embodied in objects: From the special family heirlooms that his father acquired on expeditions in Egypt (a scarab ring; a curious bejeweled storklike sculpture) to more seemingly banal objects (the Remington typewriter with which Petrie records the story; the pages themselves), Ozick shows how objects can powerfully represent the past and how our perspective on that past can be colored by the passing of time. But the object that holds most interest in Petrie’s remembrances is another boy at school—the formidably named Ben-Zion Elefantin, whose murky past and heritage interest and frighten Petrie. Their unlikely friendship, and its homoerotic undertones, consumes much of Petrie’s musings. Central to these musings is Elefantin’s unfamiliar Jewish heritage and ties to Egypt, which faced much scrutiny at (the pointedly named) Temple Academy. Petrie vacillates between awareness of (if not regret about) the prejudice Jewish students faced and unthinking perpetuation of garden-variety WASP antisemitism ("In my own Academy years I saw for myself how inbred is that notorious Israelite clannishness"). The antiquities of the book’s title, then, are not only the objects—which Petrie excitedly shows to Elefantin—but the views, emotions, and experiences Petrie and his schoolmates once held, and perhaps still hold, changed as they have been over the years. What we have here is more a character study than a developed story, but Ozick’s talent shines through nonetheless; the prose itself is virtuosic.
An intelligent and vivid consideration of the embodiedness of memory, if not a particularly engrossing story.Pub Date: April 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-31882-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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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