An ambitious, ocean-spanning collection of objects and tales.
In Beeaff’s linked short stories, a writer searches for inspiration among the objects littering a Scottish beach.
After her novella unexpectedly wins a prestigious prize, author Erica Winchat finds herself with an impressive two-book deal—and a crushing case of writer’s block. “I’m stagnant with fear,” she confesses to the reader. “I’m empty, deficient, inept. I’ve nothing to say and no words to say it with.” She and her husband have traveled to a village on a remote Scottish island, where Erica combs the beach, hoping that the landscape will stir her creativity. She discovers her muse in beach trash, of all things—objects that have washed up on the island’s shore. A packet of arthritis pills reveals the story of a certified nursing assistant at a convalescent home who takes a patient’s treatment into her own hands. A plastic cigarette lighter summons the night an aging Broadway actress, fresh off her comeback performance, encounters a pair of tourists in a park. A camera’s lens cap invokes the tale of a photographer who hears strange noises in the mist while taking pictures of Newfoundland’s oldest lighthouse. The book concludes with a novella about music fans who converge at the Chicago concert of the Scottish band they love only to find themselves in the midst of a tragedy. Beeaff weaves beautiful sentences, particularly when describing locations, as when Erica and her spouse ride a ferry between two of the Hebrides: “the small boat beat against the wind and the waves through one of the loneliest stretches of the planet I’ve ever seen. Distant black islands dulled with the rain. Plumes of spray nibbled at their base.” The 12 stories that make up the first section of the book are little more than vignettes, fizzling away before a narrative can take root; the aforementioned novella is the highlight of the collection, although it ultimately drifts into melodrama. Overall, the book’s form is an intriguing experiment that doesn’t quite seem to achieve its potential. Even so, Beeaff’s prose is of such high quality, page to page, that readers won’t want to put it down.
An ambitious, ocean-spanning collection of objects and tales.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-771-5
Page Count: 248
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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