McKenzie has created a wonderful addition to the crew of damaged characters beloved by readers, so very endearing and real.
When her mad-scientist grandmother waves a gun at Meals on Wheels, Penny Rush is called to Santa Barbara, where her adventures begin.
The unattributed epigraph of this book—"For a while I went berserk, and wished it would never end..."—is eventually revealed to be an excerpt from the journal of one of the characters. One suspects it also reflects McKenzie's state of mind while writing this delightful narrative, and it soon becomes relatable for the enchanted reader. Sadly, no matter how many times you try to pause so it won't be over, it still ends—with a decent outcome for its protagonist, thank heaven, because by that time you will be fully in love with Penny, a socially awkward, deeply idiosyncratic misfit with trauma in her past, somewhere on the spectrum between Elizabeth Zott of Lessons in Chemistry and Eleanor Oliphant of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. "In the past twenty-four hours," she says at the outset, "I’d abruptly left my job, burning a bridge that I was happy to cross for the last time, and I’d confronted my husband Sherman: I know all about Bebe Sinatra and the cocaine." She's picked up at the Santa Barbara train station by Burt Lampey, her grandmother Dr. Pincer's accountant, a toupéed teddy bear of a man who drives a battered Econoline van he calls the Dog of the North. His other dog is a Pomeranian known as Kweecoats, though his collar tag says QUIXOTE, surely a nod to the original picaresque novel of which this is a gleeful descendant. As Dr. Pincer's situation becomes increasingly fraught, Penny's attention is distracted by her grandfather. With his second wife kicking him out of the house, he asks Penny to accompany him to Australia to make one last search for her parents, who disappeared into the Outback five years earlier. Their experiences there will compete in death-defying drama with Penny's childhood memory of being saved from an untimely watery demise by a talking fish. “Are you a grunion?” she asks him, once safe on the beach. “I’m a false grunion. It’s all a big mistake,” he tells her. “I know what that’s like,” she replies.
McKenzie has created a wonderful addition to the crew of damaged characters beloved by readers, so very endearing and real.Pub Date: March 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-30069-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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 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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