Expansive and ingeniously crafted—an unforgettable collection.
A collection of mordant and finely crafted stories in which characters lose their faith, fall headlong into romantic obsession, and challenge the strains of familial obligation.
Set in the Córdoba mountains of Argentina, the five stories comprising Falco’s English language debut are straightforward in plot and yet unfold with narrative richness and ambition, depicting a landscape that is as vivid and alive as the characters who inhabit it. The collection opens with “The Hares,” which follows a man—called only “the king of the hares”—who has abandoned the mores of civilization to live in the forest; there, he manages to barely subsist on hares and goods stolen from the townspeople until he is found by the wife he left behind. In “Silvi and Her Dark Night,” a young girl renounces Christianity to both her family and the local priest, though she quickly stumbles into a deep and impossible infatuation with a Latter-day Saint missionary who reminds her of a village boy whose slow death she had witnessed in the local hospital. The title story introduces Victor Bagiardelli, a fastidious architect who is hired to construct the ideal cemetery in a small town whose parsimonious denizens are aggressively against the idea. And in “Woodland Life,” an elderly man loses his home in the deep woods to a development company and attempts to marry off his middle-age daughter to any man who is willing to take both of them in. Sharp, natural, and often humorous dialogue is rendered expertly through translator Croft’s finely tuned ear to colloquial Argentinian Spanish, and places are described with a richness that evokes the protagonists’ psychological depths, recalling the stories of Juan Rulfo and Julio Cortázar. For instance, in the collection’s final story, “The River,” a widow contemplates her neighbor’s odd familial dynamics and memories of her late husband when she sees a woman running naked through her neighbor’s yard in the midst of a snowstorm.
Expansive and ingeniously crafted—an unforgettable collection.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-9162-7786-1
Page Count: 175
Publisher: Charco Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 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
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