Bold and thought-provoking.
In Pausback’s novel, a journalist conducts a three-day interview with a reclusive game designer who just might have the answers to life’s biggest questions.
The author has structured this work of fiction in an interview format. The interviewer, called “D,” never reveals his subject’s identity, electing instead to refer to him simply as “K.” Readers learn that, at one time, K was a millionaire game designer and professor of game theory living in the United States who seemingly “had it all.” Like many ascetics and spiritual seekers before him, K decided to give it all up and live a life of quiet solitude, in this case on the outskirts of Panama. That’s where D crosses his path. What follows is an extended conversation between the two in which K is more than happy to share his thoughts on life, love, death, immortality, and everything in between. According to K, we are all living in a kind of “simulation.” Unlike other proponents of similar theories, K posits that the point of this simulation is to become “Love.” That might sound lofty and a bit woo-woo at first blush, but the discourse between the two comes across as grounded and sober: “Lots of people are confident tech will save us. Like believing in the second coming of Christ,” the anonymous interviewee says. “In reality though, the only thing that’s kept us from total annihilation so far has been cool-headed, rational, mature thinking (along with a good measure of dumb luck).” Their discourse is fascinating and lucid, with welcome doses of humor along the way. (“Do you believe in reincarnation?” the interviewer asks at one point. “Not this time around,” his subject replies.) K gives hope to those fearing that AI will “wake up” one day and decide to destroy humanity; he asserts that AI will never achieve true consciousness—and without true consciousness, there can be no free will. However, there’s the “burden of eternity” to contend with—K says it’s the one thing we really must learn to reconcile. It’s all very heady stuff, but, as Pausback’s ideas are rendered here, engaging with them feels as effortless as passing the time with your favorite barstool philosopher.
Bold and thought-provoking.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2024
ISBN: 9798991333009
Page Count: 386
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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