A clever ride that will be exhilarating for some but exasperating for others.
Robinson’s multilayered metanarrative follows professors who revive a Russian classic and pursue it to unbelievable conclusions.
A formal editorial foreword from the fictional Liberal State University Press puts the exact authorship of this novel, and the stage version of Alexander Pushkin’s classic 19th-century novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin within it, in doubt—although the work remains attributed to a Douglas Robinson. Readers then dive directly into the play, which updates the Russian masterpiece with contemporary language and a cheeky twist that leaves its characters in search of their own narrator: Pushkin himself. The layers of authorship and identity get thornier as readers meet Professor Kip Knurl, who, in order to properly direct and star in the production, has started living his everyday life as Pushkin: “I don’t ask people to call me Pushkin as a favor,” Kip thinks to himself after an awkward conversation with a charming waitress at the local cafe. “I am Pushkin.” Kip’s dedication to the role goes to such extremes that it jeopardizes his marriage, provokes bizarre, violent reactions from his student castmates, and may have altered reality itself. After a mysterious assassin shoots Kip, the specter of Pushkin himself visits the play’s author, Douglas Robinson—or is it some ghostly version of Kip playing Pushkin—or something extraterrestrial? Real-life author Robinson is clearly having a ball as he gleefully constructs a postmodern roller coaster. He loops between deep comparative-literature questions and slapstick absurdities, such as medically impossible wounds and a violent football game between competitors dressed in lingerie. The story’s many layers can be off-putting at times, however. Readers who are less familiar with Pushkin may feel just as adrift as the book’s ghostly narrators—especially in the lengthy, challenging opening, which demands some knowledge of the original. Literature majors, or fans of self-aware fiction by the likes of David Foster Wallace, will be more likely to gladly untangle the strange knots that Robinson ties.
A clever ride that will be exhilarating for some but exasperating for others.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9798901740477
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
