A brilliant novel with much to say about work, family, excess, identity, and love.
A jaded content moderator gets more than she bargained for, on the job and off.
Having been a content moderator at social media site Reeden for an unheard-of 10 years, 30-something Filipina Girlie Delmundo excels at her job. Girlie works in the company’s Vegas location, where her family relocated after her mother and aunts snapped up pricey real estate and then lost everything in the 2008 stock market crash, forcing Girlie’s mother to sell their family home in Milpitas and saddling her with a million dollars in debt. Sardonic, prickly, “battle-hardened bisexual” Girlie uses the money she earns to buy her materialistic mother designer goods and pay down the family debt. In conjunction with L’Olifant, a French company known for its historical theme parks, Reeden acquires virtual reality company Playground, and Girlie meets William Cheung, one of Playground’s first employees and current Global Head of Content Moderation. William offers Girlie a promotion (and a massive raise) to join the Playground team moderating content in real time in the company’s virtual reality landscapes. Playground’s goal is not strictly realism but “larger than life. Realer reality. Sensory overload,” as Girlie observes. As Playground grows, regulatory troubles and scandals—there’s a lingering mystery surrounding the death of Edison Lau, Playground’s founder and William’s friend—swirl around the company. These developments, along with the horrifying realization of the mutual attraction growing between her and the aloof William, threaten the meticulous construction that Girlie has made of her career and her life. With this novel, her second after America Is Not the Heart (2018), Castillo raises the bar for writing about tech and virtual reality, family stories, and workplace romances. Castillo’s gorgeous prose infuses both the real world and the virtual reality landscapes with life. Girlie is an exceptional protagonist, defined by her cutting humor and dogged, almost maniacal independence and rounded out by her fondness for her exuberant, naïve cousin Maribel, the rawness of her feelings for William, and her yearning for true happiness, if she can find a way to let it in.
A brilliant novel with much to say about work, family, excess, identity, and love.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9780593489666
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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