A rich, finely rendered novel.
In this family saga split between two continents, a young Saudi American woman grapples with her itinerant, mysterious childhood.
It’s 1970, and Muneer’s relationship with his pregnant wife, Saeedah, is steadily deteriorating. He watches helplessly as she shovels snow in front of their Cleveland Heights, Ohio, rental house without wearing a coat or gloves and later walks into a freezing lake nearly naked. They have the baby—"The child will be OK, will be born beautiful and whole, will be named Hanadi”—but the couple gets divorced shortly after, and Muneer moves back to their hometown of Jidda, Saudi Arabia, while Saeedah and the baby stay in Ohio. Then, on Hanadi’s fifth birthday, Saeedah takes the girl and vanishes. In sections that jump across decades and shift between Muneer’s, Hanadi’s, and Saeedah’s perspectives, debut author Quotah gracefully charts the way this decision overturns the three family members’ lives. Muneer spends the next 12 years searching for his daughter with the help of a private investigator hired by his father-in-law, even as he works at a newspaper in Jidda, remarries, and has more children. Hanadi grows up longing for her father as she and Saeedah move around, from Toledo to San Francisco, while Saeedah works odd jobs under assumed names and flees whenever she notices anyone watching too closely. Eventually, when Hanadi—or Hannah, as she's now called—is 17, Muneer tracks her down. As she travels to Jidda to meet her relatives, she must navigate both her joy at discovering a family she didn’t know she had (“to have dozens of people feels like a gift, a gift of love that she never expected”) and resentment toward her mother for a lifetime of lies. Saeedah’s side of the story, in many ways the most intriguing, is also the most shadowy, and one wishes it were more fleshed out. But Quotah, born in Jidda to an American mother and Saudi father, depicts Saudi culture in engrossing detail, from fruit-scented shisha smoke to traditional wedding customs: “their relatives refuse to allow musical instruments at weddings—no lute, no dancing, no ‘Ya Layla Dana,’ no stereo, no songs by Amr Diab or Ragheb Alama. Only drumming and human voices, songs about God and the Prophet.”
A rich, finely rendered novel.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951142-45-2
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
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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