With his gift for creating vibrantly specific characters and settings, Stuart again taps profound human truth.
In Scotland’s Hebrides islands, a closeted gay man returns home to an insular community of sheep farmers and weavers, where complications and secrets await.
Stuart follows his Booker Prize–winning debut, Shuggie Bain (2020), and acclaimed second novel, Young Mungo (2022), both set in Glasgow, with a coming-of-age story set in a very different part of Scotland. John-Calum Macleod has left art school in Edinburgh, broke and without prospects, called home to the Isle of Harris by his father because his grandmother is unwell. Ella, his mother’s mother, lives with her former son-in-law on his croft while her remarried daughter lives elsewhere with her husband and younger children. The reason for this unusual arrangement will become clear slowly, along with other key issues: Why Cal’s father, also named John, a pillar of the extremely conservative local Presbyterian church, is so tortured; what led to the end of his marriage; whether Cal’s attempts to hide his sexuality from everyone except the neighbor boy who used to be his lover have been successful. When that boy, Doll Macdonald, gives Cal an icy cold shoulder upon his return, his attention falls on his father’s best friend, Innes MacInnes, a never-married man who lives with his own ancient, infirm father and emotionally estranged brother. Could Innes possibly be gay? Cal wonders. The 22-year-old Cal exists at the confluence of two profoundly different cultures. On the one hand, he speaks Gaelic with his father, works nights weaving traditional tweed on their loom, helps with the sheep, and attends his father’s evangelical church. On the other, he takes ecstasy, goes to a booze- and sex-focused hullabaloo on a party bus, tries to find a hook-up in the personal ads (it seems to be the 1990s). The central question of the book, which is facing all the main characters, is whether it’s possible to inhabit the place one calls home as one’s genuine self. Stay or go? Life or death? By the end, this issue is resolved in a variety of tragic and hopeful ways.
With his gift for creating vibrantly specific characters and settings, Stuart again taps profound human truth.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780802167194
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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