Captivating fluff, full of funny curveballs and wicked jibes.
A dumb, crass, smarmy, absurdist United States of America is lampooned in White’s droll collection of comic pieces.
The author sends up many fat target balloons in these mostly brief literary japes. They include a fire-breathing letter to a mayor (“Did you earn a master’s degree in mismanagement from Moron U?”) from an unlikely constituent; a memo to employees from a cost-cutting CEO who announces that the dental plan will only cover the upper front teeth; a news article about a controversial real-estate development to be named “Morning Wood”; a courtroom drama in which a puritanical judge and a conniving reporter team up to get a porn shop proprietor prosecuted for obscenity but badly miscalculate their community’s standards of decency; a list of twisted book titles that includes Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask Your Teen; and a mordant account of a doctor’s visit that ends with a prostate exam. The last half of the book takes the form of a faux guidebook to the 50 states, informing readers that Florida’s official motto is “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” White’s writing features hilariously incongruous mismatches of content and language (“Elderly w/f suspect allegedly enticed complainants into said gingerbread dwelling,” reports a police blotter account of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale) and whip-smart parodies of stale tropes with punchlines that pirouette on a dime (“In a recent horoscope,” confesses a newspaper corrections column, “the guest astrologer mistakenly advised everybody born under the sign Sagittarius to don helmets and hide in their closets until the Rapture occurs or they are contacted by the government, preferably ours. That advice was intended for Leos.”) Percolating throughout the collection is a vision of a nation that glories in its own banality and blight (“Today, Alaska is a popular destination for tourists, who enjoy watching glaciers melt while sipping tropical cocktails on the decks of massive cruise ships that maneuver around oil slicks and stranded polar bears on drifting icebergs.”) The result is a wittily jaundiced take on modern life.
Captivating fluff, full of funny curveballs and wicked jibes.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9798392693030
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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