An atmospheric, eloquent depiction of teen angst and discovery in the twilight years of California’s counterculture era.
A troubled teen experiences the freedoms and dangers of 1960s California youth culture in Isaak’s coming-of-age novel.
It’s 1969, four years since Rick Leibnitz’s mother fled their Redlands, California, home, taking his younger brother and sister away to escape beatings by Rick’s father. Fifteen-year-old Rick and his father have long “discarded any pretense of trying to get along.” His father tries to forcibly cut Rick’s long hair and reveals that Rick is his “only son.” For Rick, it’s an epiphany: “I almost laughed. The way I felt about him, how could I blame her? I’d leave me too.” Later, Rick is sitting outside his house when 17-year-old Stacy Slater, one of many girls who star in his masturbatory fantasies, stumbles up to a neighbor’s door. After no one answers, Stacy and Rick go to a nearby orange grove, where he loses his virginity to her. Stacy asks Rick to stash her drugs, and he gets picked up by the cops shortly thereafter. Sent to juvenile detention, Rick refuses to rat on Stacy and again resists getting a haircut. Leo Malheur, Rick’s “tall and coal-black” probation officer, brokers his release, although Rick’s father, who has moved to nearby Yucaipa, now plans to send Rick to military school the following year. Lincoln Ellard, a charismatic classmate at Rick’s Yucaipa school, helps Rick avoid this fate. The boys get a house together, where Lincoln leads intellectual “salon” discussions and lets Rick in on his drug running operations. Rick enjoys a psychedelic summer of sex and drugs until trouble arises, leading to another jail stint and new information that inspires him to hit the road to reconnect with his mother.
The articulate and introspective narrator observes and engages in a “trippy” world reminiscent of Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero, substituting the groovy late 1960s for the go-getter 1980s. As Rick muses at the end of the novel: “There were sick people among us, just as in any other generation, and hair and clothes and attitudes and drugs for them were nothing more than disguises they had donned. What had been glorious craziness in the summer looked more like actual madness in the fall.” The book packs a lot of characters and subplots into its pages, including finely etched moments focused on Rick’s probation officer, who strives for justice, is subject to racist remarks, and is in danger of being drafted. Lincoln is a marvelously drawn flawed-prophet figure who ultimately realizes he’s been “dangerously naïve.” The narrative very effectively captures a male teen’s sex-on-the-brain obsession with girls yet also fleshes out its female characters with thoughts and problems of their own. A particularly memorable sequence concerns a “pulling a train” event (group sex with one female and multiple male partners taking turns) at a party and the subsequent perspectives of both the girl involved and the girls who watched it happen.
An atmospheric, eloquent depiction of teen angst and discovery in the twilight years of California’s counterculture era.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781958840047
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Utamatzi Inc.
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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