Like Clarke’s debut, this is technically adventurous, politically relevant, and emotionally engaging.
The author of Thin Girls (2020) turns from disordered eating to sex work in her second novel.
The novel opens with a Vogue features editor gushing about Lady Lane—about her hair, her skin, the way she moves—and complaining about the fact that Lady refuses to share any information at all about her past. She ends with the line: “There’s talk of a multimillion-dollar book deal on the table for Lady Lane’s biography, but no one can get her to agree to tell the whole story.” In the next line, Lady herself takes over the narration. Her first words are, “I’ll start from the beginning.” The tension between one sentence and the next is amusing, but it also hints at what’s to come. This is the “whole story.” It’s the story Lady chooses to tell about herself. But it’s also the stories that other people tell about her—and the fact that these stories are valuable currency is an inevitable product of her celebrity. Lady describes an impoverished childhood in New Zealand, the death of her loving but unreliable mother, and her decision to move to the United States to work as a Bunny in a legal brothel in Nevada. She recounts childhood crushes and how she began charging money for kisses as a girl. And she offers a look inside the sex industry. But there are other voices here, too, co-workers, friends, and other people who know her. Their stories add texture to Lady’s account, and they often contradict her memory of events or her sense of herself. The plot turns on her realization that, although she made the choice to work at The Hop, the brothel’s owner regards her as a commodity, essentially interchangeable with the woman she replaces. The choice to work for him is a one-time exchange; making this choice means giving him license to choose how he uses her. Liberating herself—and her fellow Bunnies—will require a full-scale revolution. Although the narrative ends with some of the trappings of a conventional happily-ever-after, they are hard-won, and Clarke refuses to turn this story into a morality play. Newly rich and famous, Lady doesn’t turn away from sex work. Instead, she uses her new freedom to imagine what sex work might look like if its practitioners were truly empowered and autonomous.
Like Clarke’s debut, this is technically adventurous, politically relevant, and emotionally engaging.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-308-909-9
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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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