A shining exploration of human frailty and endurance falters when it attempts social analysis.
A 44-year-old woman comes to terms with her life while attending an annual corporate banquet.
Software analyst Trisha Donahue always relished the annual boozy parties thrown at the Rose & Emerald restaurant in central Massachusetts by the Boston company where she’s worked for eight years. But new management runs the company with a more corporate ethos, and speechifying has replaced drinking alcohol, no longer allowed, at the now unofficially mandatory banquets. Having learned that she’s been passed over for a promotion she was all but promised, Trisha is a reluctant attendee this year. Then she’s stunned, not in a good way, when management announces to the crowd that she’s the first woman “Employee of the Year.” Trisha flees within the passageways of the almost magically charming Rose & Emerald, located (perhaps too) coincidentally in the community where she grew up “on the wrong side of the tracks.” While Cooney effectively draws peripheral characters like Trisha’s privileged yet self-aware husband and her stoic, ailing boss, the only character that truly matters here is Trisha. As she struggles through this one crazy day, she reviews her evolution from a working-class girl with brains and ambition to a woman afraid to rock the status quo. The depiction of Trisha’s middle-class financial anxiety is spot-on, but Cooney lays on the sociopolitical critique with a heavy hand. Trisha so relentlessly complains about blockheaded bosses and bemoans turning “corporate” that the good reasons she’s angry become boring. The novel’s explorations of class inequality and corporate mentality seldom reach beyond the obvious, and its perspective on society’s unfair treatment of women seems dated—Trisha has no awareness of the #MeToo movement, and her thoughts on what clothes a successful woman needs, including pantyhose, feel anachronistic. But Cooney is remarkably adept at capturing minute inner crises within an individual and the imperfect but real connections between people. While the writing can be pessimistic, even cynical, neither Cooney nor her central character is afraid to look kindness in the face when it arises. No mean feat.
A shining exploration of human frailty and endurance falters when it attempts social analysis.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781566896719
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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