This atmospheric first novel is an ode to friendship, creativity, and an era now gone.
A bittersweet love letter to 1990s New York.
Anyone who lived through the final decade of the last century in New York City will instantly recognize the world evoked by Kois, a longtime editor, in his debut novel. That goes double for young people raised in suburbs across the U.S. who moved to the city to work in publishing or the arts or for nonprofits. To be sure, that is a very specific readership slice. But those who fall into it may find themselves remembering—fondly or not, depending—their early 20s in a city that could be alienating, frightening, and diminishing but also intoxicatingly exciting. Kois focuses on the friendship between two young women, one a conscientious Midwesterner working in book publishing and subletting a sketchy apartment with a college friend, the other a free spirit who conceives of site-specific works around the city and lives in a squat. For unclear reasons, Kois has named both characters Emily. “If we were characters in a story,” one says to the other during an early encounter, “it would be pretty confusing that we were both named Emily.” Kois skirts confusion, to some degree, by identifying one Emily (the publishing one, who is the novel’s main character) as Em through much of the book. The somewhat nonlinear plot tracks Em’s maturation from a literary-agency assistant hanging out downtown in the early '90s to an established book editor raising a young daughter with her lawyer husband all the way uptown in the mid-2000s. Em’s rocky yet formative early friendship with Emily eventually peters out only to fire up again years later and again prompt change and growth. What’s best about Kois’ work here is not his novel’s low-stakes, episodic plot but rather his eye for detail and penchant for humorously trenchant descriptions: Em notes that Emily is wearing leather pants “that Em would never have been able to pull off, even if she could have pulled them on.” Such asides are amusing, but what does the Emilys’ story mean at a deeper level? It's hard to say, though this line, near the end, offers resonance: “Maybe we’re all frauds at twenty-five. But in our fraudulent selves we see the seeds of the artists we might become, if we can overcome our worst tendencies.” In the book’s final line, Em tells her daughter, “I’m always watching.” This keenly observed if imperfect book makes clear that Kois is, too.
This atmospheric first novel is an ode to friendship, creativity, and an era now gone.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-06-316-241-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
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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