A quixotic exploration of the recent past that reveals something far deeper about how we will remember the future.
Friends talk their way through the 24-hour news cycle during what turns out to be an inflection point in history.
It’s June 2016. A group of friends gather in the courtyard of a New York City bar to discuss their days, their dates, their philosophies of art and life. In November there will be an election whose consequences can’t quite be imagined yet. The Brexit vote goes through in England. In Minnesota, Philando Castile is shot to death at a traffic stop by police. As a cohesive book, this novella resists definition—both in terms of its construction and its central energy. The friends break into the day-by-day, diaristic format of the narrative—which includes shopping lists, the plots of movies, and the news of the day with equal import—to tell their own stories of chance encounters, overheard conversations, or personal epiphanies. In San Francisco, John, the curator of these many narrations, goes on a quest to locate the studio where Neil Young recorded the soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man for no reason other than to see if he can. In a philosophical throughline, multiple characters bemoan the loss of the analog experience. Speaking again of Young—specifically his habit of working out early drafts of songs live onstage in the pre-YouTube era—one of the friends says, “A form of life, of artistic practice, that required the presence of other people is no longer possible; the audience is no longer able to be there as people, only devices, recording and comparing.” Whether or not this may be true for Neil Young fans, it does not feel true for readers of this book, who wash in and out of the flood of images conjured by John and his friends only to come up hard against the immutable fact of a headline that both binds us to the experience through shared history and underscores the privilege of hindsight. While some readers may search for a point among all this overlaid ephemera, Searls’ insistent return to the moments when analog experiences interrupt the forward momentum of events—a girl taking a surreptitious photo on the train, lizards on a hiking path startled by lightning—show that the book’s real interest lies in the ordinary power of sensation, rather than the flashbulb sensationalism of event.
A quixotic exploration of the recent past that reveals something far deeper about how we will remember the future.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781566897396
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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 dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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