Could use more polish, but this bright writer is leading the way into an exciting future for queer literature.
Tender, incisive portraits of trans womanhood, the ties that bind women to one another, and the complex relationships of youth.
Simultaneously aligned with queer coming-of-age story collections of previous generations and dexterously subverting and revitalizing the genre, these seven stories offer a glimpse into the future of queer literature. They capture Gen Z’s best traits: intuitiveness and self-assurance. The characters are candid and more self-aware than previous generations, but focused on the normal concerns of youth: relationships, sex, work, and how to be a person in the world. The dialogue feels natural and brings each character to life. In "Means to an End," 20-year-old Leonora has dropped out of NYU and is “the fourth tenant of the lesbian love triangle apartment.” Her roommates’ constant conflict creates a fraught living environment that frames her own low-frequency internal instability as she grows into herself and tries to figure out how to live life on her own terms. Relying on the emotional growth of the characters for propulsion, Zhou scatters her text with poetic gestures that hint at resolution but leave the characters’ preoccupations ultimately unresolved. For example, thinking about a tense conversation the night before with a woman she had feelings for, Leonora describes the apartment in detail and notes that “the light was turning soft and forgiving.” Then she does the dishes that had caused tension among her roommates the night before: “At the end of the dishes, there was an empty sink. I watched the water run down the drain for a moment.” These images suggest that, while the messiness of her life and her relationship with the woman is tidied up for now, a sense of emptiness remains; the character conveys her emotions without directly saying how she feels. The final story, “Gap Year,” documents the narrator’s life in a series of dated fragments that conclude with an insight that feels true to the protagonists of all the other stories: “Maybe what I was trying to capture in these pages was your sense of purpose, the way you seemed to cut a straight, clear path through the world….[Sometimes you] would make me feel like everything extraneous had fallen away and I lived suddenly in a clean, clear reality that seemed navigable.”
Could use more polish, but this bright writer is leading the way into an exciting future for queer literature.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781736716847
Page Count: 180
Publisher: LittlePuss Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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
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