Crucial stories that pierce the heart of the modern world. A must-read.
Thirteen short stories by one of the Mexican progenitors of magical realism, translated for the first time into English.
In Garro’s fleeting, powerful visions, the only thing that’s certain is uncertainty, though never the uncertainty of the author, the characters, or the readers. Rather, Garro explores the uncertainty of time itself. In “It’s the Tlaxcalteca’s Fault,” a young wife in a wealthy household flits through the centuries, imprisoned by the comfort of her life in modern-day Mexico City, free when she suffers the horror of the fall of Tenochtitlán to the invading conquistadors in the 1500s. In the title story, two sisters spy on the mysterious Don Flor, who keeps the colorful days of the week imprisoned in his round white house, torturing them into submission so that he may “fit [them] with the virtue that would check [their] vice.” In “The Day We Were Dogs,” the same two children will themselves into becoming dogs named Christ and Buddha and—together with Toni, a real family pet—wander through an animal’s nonsynchronous experience of time, where they witness a gruesome murder. The theme of parallel time frames and characters who experience multiple simultaneous realities is employed in the majority of the stories, as are repeated characters—the two sisters, Eva and Leli; their witchy housekeeper, Candelaria; the beleaguered servant, Rutilio—who resemble each other from story to story but do not perfectly replicate the lives they lived before. The result is prose that swims with a heady sense of transformation, of sorrow, of the inescapable violence of the past, of the predictable violence of the future, all threaded together by Garro’s fine stylistic sensibility and startling descriptive voice. Originally published in 1964, this collection stands as a seminal work prefiguring the surrealist and magical realist movements that would come to define so much of Latin American literature in the decades to come. However, a contemporary reader coming fresh to Garro’s work will find a voice that feels as vital today as it ever did.
Crucial stories that pierce the heart of the modern world. A must-read.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781949641899
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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 tart meditation on narrative and integrity.
A writer’s meeting with his mentor goes complicatedly awry.
Lerner’s slim fourth novel opens with an unnamed narrator arriving in Providence, Rhode Island, on a magazine assignment to interview Thomas, a professor who’s “among the world’s most renowned thinkers about art and technology.” Just before leaving his hotel, though, he accidentally knocks his phone in a sink, bricking it. His sole means of recording the interview gone, he triages, suggesting that he and Thomas conduct a pre-interview that evening and do a full-dress conversation the next day, after he can get the device fixed. The setup seems thin, but, this being a Lerner novel, rich ethical and philosophical questions fly off it: He’s concerned with the ways that an interview poisons authentic conversation, with our over-reliance on technology, and the moral dilemmas of talking to an unreliable source. (Thomas, 90, seems distracted and sometimes dotty.) Lerner’s true subject isn’t an interview so much as it is misapprehension and miscommunication; after the meeting with Thomas in the first section, the second and third parts are concerned with characters’ failures to understand something about each other, be it a romantic partner’s wishes or a child’s eating disorder. That last challenge makes for some of the most vivid, offbeat, and affecting writing Lerner has delivered—a surprise, given his fiction is typically marked by DeLillo-esque sangfroid. Another surprise is the relative embrace of a conventional story arc, as the narrator faces a reckoning about living in a “deepfake” world. This is slighter fare for Lerner but surprisingly potent given its length, interested in the ways that we manufacture our identities and how technology speeds the process along.
A tart meditation on narrative and integrity.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780374618599
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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