A well-turned exploration of how intensely place and history shape our identities.
A gay New Yorker revisits his Florida roots to reckon with death, family, and old bigotries.
Daniel, the narrator of Rodriques’ assured debut, is finding his way as a high school teacher in New York and struggling to keep a relationship when he gets some bad news: Aubrey, a high school friend, has died in a car crash near where they grew up in North Florida. The incident calls up a host of tender memories: She was one of the few White people in his high school who seemed comfortable with him as a Black man. But the incident also surfaces a host of identity crises: Daniel’s North Florida adolescence was the crucible of his sexuality as well as his family heritage, a long line of slavery, violence, and abuse stretching back to his family’s native Jamaica. Plotwise, the novel is a coming-of-age story with something of the tenor of a mystery: Daniel returns to Florida to sort out why Aubrey was in a car with Brandon, an abusive and hard-drinking ex-boyfriend. But the novel’s tension comes from Daniel’s struggle to navigate the emotional and cultural baggage he brings on the trip. Just as Daniel code-switches depending on whether he’s talking with his Black friends, gay men, poor Whites, or Jamaican relatives, the narrative alternates among the brightness of his memories of Aubrey, dark recollections of how his mother and grandmother were treated, and his present-day confrontations with those who knew Aubrey, including Brandon, and a general feeling of being adrift and rootless. (A reference to The Odyssey is on-point.) The tail end of the book, which turns on Daniel’s emotional purging, runs at a somewhat disappointing low boil considering the visceral incidents that precede it. But Rodriques brings a lyrical touch to his hero’s inner life, making his past pains and present-day heartbreaks feel bone-deep.
A well-turned exploration of how intensely place and history shape our identities.Pub Date: June 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-393-54079-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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