A darkly unsettling but highly readable novel by a leading voice in Latin American fiction.
In his latest short but powerful autobiographical novel, Halfon continues reflecting on the traumas of the Holocaust while raising the question of whether they are beyond the scope of fiction.
In 1984, three years after his family moved to Florida to escape the brutal civil war in Guatemala, 13-year-old Eduardo and his younger brother are sent back to their homeland to participate in a Jewish children’s camp. Although his parents don’t say so, Halfon thinks they wanted to “restore” their Americanized children to Judaism. But the camp turns out to be a horrific place—a simulated concentration camp where the idea is to mistreat the kids into appreciating how evil the Nazis were. “Jewish children…need to learn as early as possible…that everyone else is an antisemite, that the whole world revolves around this most ancient hatred,” says their counselor, Samuel Blum, who wears an SS uniform and a swastika armband and first appears with a tarantula crawling down his arm. A desperate Eduardo escapes the camp, getting lost and confused in the mountains but finding safe haven with a young Indigenous woman. But Halfon, who witnessed the post-Auschwitz delirium of his Polish grandfather, will never be able to escape such painful memories—or the ones he creates himself. “Is imagination so fanciful and audacious that it can invent a memory and then transform it into something we understand as true?” he asks, haunted by a “No Dogs or Jews Allowed” sign he may or may not have seen as a little kid outside his unbothered father’s Florida golf club. A winning storyteller with a subtle sense of irony, Halfon moves with ease through experiences past and present, here and there, trusting his powers of observation to draw readers in. Refusing to traffic in suffering, he makes us feel the horrors on a deeper level.
A darkly unsettling but highly readable novel by a leading voice in Latin American fiction.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9781954276567
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
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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