A cynical, misanthropic, foulmouthed novel that no curious reader will be able to put down.
A fiction debut in which an anonymous internet troll has a kind of quarter-life crisis.
In this sprawling, rambunctious novel, Fitzgerald places his unnamed main character—an aimless, dissolute, perpetually horny online troll—on the cusp of a deep-seated personal dilemma. When he graduated from college (it was years ago, but he still has infinite student loans to pay off), his remaining friends warned him, “You have to get out of this town the second you graduate, or else you’ll never leave.” And the warning has come true: “No matter what route you take home,” the narrator tells himself, “you’re guaranteed to see a University bus whizz by or glimpse one of the crumbling dormitories you used to call home—teeming, iniquitous high-rises after J. G. Ballard's own heart.” The entire novel is set in the second person—a bit of a workout, especially over 500 pages, but the author pulls it off with impressive skill. The narrative follows its hapless main character through his largely aimless days, varying from online porn to large amounts of alcohol and marijuana. These misadventures are punctuated with long excerpts from the protagonist’s writings on pop culture and the nature of the perpetually online modern world. “Thanks to vertically integrated marketing strategies and the commodification of ‘cool,’ true originality has almost ceased to exist,” he muses in typically caustic terms. “Individually, we may all be snowflakes, but together, we’re a fucking whiteout.” As this tour through the protagonist’s tortured psyche reaches a crisis point, it is obvious something has to give, and soon.
In addition to successfully employing a seldom-used narrative point of view, Fitzgerald also accomplishes several other daring feats. The novel's narrative manages to be crude without being stupid and eloquent without having anything remotely pleasant to say. The author's sheer exuberance in describing everything from a mood shift to a bar fight is unflagging: “Wild-pitched shot- and pint-glasses shell the liquor display behind the bar like a knock-em-over carnival game, sending a waterfall of spirits crashing from the top shelf down,” goes one such moment. “The staff retreat to the back offices soaked in their own wares—their cuts and scrapes pre-sterilized by the downpour—and opportunistic alkies start absconding with whatever merchandise is still intact while the rest of the crowd makes for the door.” Our troll-ish main character grouses about the artificiality of online culture. There are many scenes driven by grotesque Pynchon-esque humor: After a particularly nasty incident, a bathroom is described as “a GG Allin-themed sanguinarium.” And the main character's lengthy dissertations on classic TV shows like Family Guy, The Simpsons, and especially Friends are genuinely fascinating. By the time “some migratory, sea turtle-type level” prompts the main character to one final epic feat of trolling, readers will be rooting for him despite his despicable ways.
A cynical, misanthropic, foulmouthed novel that no curious reader will be able to put down.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781952600326
Page Count: 590
Publisher: Whiskey Tit
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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