An enthusiastic if scattershot novel about Irish youth awash in ideas.
A group of teenagers tries to make sense of life and the future of humanity in Sparling’s debut novel.
On New Year’s Eve in 2001, the lives of several young rival gang members end in tragedy; a boy named Ger narrowly escapes a fiery cliffside inferno as the sole survivor. The story then introduces another group of teenagers: Remy, his best friend, Sid, and their friend, Liz—all Dublin-based buddies since childhood who have “evolved in thought together.” Remy is a natural philosopher and an argumentative talker—he provides the novel’s most engaging conversational volleys, holding forth on a robotic world takeover, art, and global politics while expressing extreme frustration over those from his generation who resort to suicide bombing, “blowing themselves up in an act of glory and defiance on the streets of our cities.” When Ger, known as a mobster and a pimp, is spied in Remy’s neighborhood with a sex worker named Katie, Remy does some digging and discovers Ger’s connection to the violent events on the cliff in 2001. The narrative skips ahead to follow Sid, now in his early 20s and frustrated by his career-focused girlfriend, Susan. Sid considers Ger an embodiment of “the ugly side of the Irish psyche.” They immediately butt heads and violence erupts. The concluding section examines Katie’s life as she struggles to comprehend love, sex, and identity, and to make peace with her illicit past as the war in Iraq begins to simmer. Readers will certainly be challenged when trying to piece together the myriad fragments of these tempestuous characters’ lives, which can seem like fever dreams full of frenetic details. While the characters and their melodramatic interactions are stimulating and engaging, the undercooked plot strands them within the confines of their dialogues about immortality, capitalism, and music. Readers able to overlook the lack of narrative cohesion and the erratic storytelling will enjoy Sparling’s character-driven story, which brims with scholarly, introspective digressions and entertaining, opinionated food for thought.
An enthusiastic if scattershot novel about Irish youth awash in ideas.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2024
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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