A 192-proof comedy for those with a taste for the hard stuff.
It’s fear and loathing in Walt Disney World as two gin-soaked slackers attempt to drown out the dying of their misspent youth with gallons of alcohol in Roberts’ novel.
Multimillionaire John “Johnny Boy” Apple is on a mission to hunt down the woman of his dreams and marry her before the clock finally ticks down on his wonderfully errant 20s. Because his parents died tragically in a plane crash on the way home from the Magic Kingdom when he was a kid, Johnny Boy figures Disney World is the place to make it all happen. His pal, Murray “Cheese” Marks, is the ultimate wingman, and so enamored of the rakishly handsome Johnny Boy that Cheese sometimes wonders if he might be gay. Overweight and unattractive, Cheese is the polar opposite of his childhood friend. He’s got a wife back home named Florence, who he probably shouldn’t have left alone; it isn’t long before she and Johnny Boy’s ex Kathy become lovers. But that’s just a peripheral concern for Cheese, who is much more focused on the new woman in his pal’s life, a sultry Southern belle named Virginia Wells whom Cheese has hopelessly fallen for (“I love Virginia Wells, and you and your big fat Cartier ring are going to suck the pale green light out of her countryside eyes”).
The complexity of Roberts’ off-kilter comedy makes perfect sense to each of the pickled protagonists, who have trapped themselves in the “happiest place on earth” and never stop drinking. (At least on some level, it’s an opportunity for both Cheese and Johnny Boy to realize there’s a real price to pay when you dare to dance with the mouse for too long.) Readers share in the sense of drunken stupor and are purposely deprived of any sure footing. Cheese is the most unreliable of narrators as he continually mixes the profound with the profane. (“Murray,” he remembers his mom telling him, “your greatest life lives on the other side of fear.”) One of Roberts’ gifts as a writer is his ability to evoke empathy amidst the debauchery; Cheese is a nebbish full of fear, and the breakup of his marriage to Florence couldn’t be more heartbreaking as it inexorably unfolds over a course of days via BlackBerry messages. (“Only love can stop time’s advance,” Cheese drunkenly pontificates after going solo at Splash Mountain. “That’s why it’s the only miracle in this short life.”) Cheese and Johnny Boy may not be doing anything other than getting soused during their latest and greatest bender, but the characters do achieve transformative heights, whether they like it or not—the challenge for readers is hanging in with them for the ride as the proceedings threaten to become as monotonous and tedious as their aimless Disney World existence. It’s like watching the impact of a slow-motion car wreck on the occupants (the results are going to be profound no matter how bad the crash ultimately ends up being). Somebody grab the car keys from these guys and call ‘em a taxi before they hurt somebody.
A 192-proof comedy for those with a taste for the hard stuff.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781648210693
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2024
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
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
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