Powerful works that examine the violent and erotic lives of characters struggling with mortality.
A poet’s poignant debut collection of prose stories.
Percesepe is an editor at New World Writing and an established, well-respected writer of poetry, but this is his first published book of short fiction, and it’s a stunner. It contains more than 35 stories, many set in and around upstate New York in winter, with sudden deaths or losses frequently serving as narrative starting points. In “You Look Different,” for example, a father is haunted as he replays a nightmarish scene in his mind: “the one the driver with the thick fingers never saw as he swerved on the ice to avoid the yellow school bus, in his panic not seeing the small dark form that was your son.” Percesepe returns often to two themes: how one continues to live on after the death of a loved one and how one’s recognition of frail mortality affects one’s ability to be intimate. “It’s not death that’s difficult,” one character in “Summer: 1972” insightfully explains to her lover, but the act of dying is: “Death loves us. Death is easy. It’s getting there that’s hard.” Some narrative voices appear more than once, but although readers are allowed glimpses of the same characters at different moments of their lives, they always seem to remain stuck, glaring “into the dead space of time,” like Joe in “Lulu,” reflecting on a lost love while visiting his childhood home for a funeral. Appropriately, Percesepe’s writing has been compared to that of the late, great Raymond Carver; both writers revel in brutal vulnerability—a world, as Percesepe puts it, in which “love is a brawler” and characters have “had sex for the first time at fourteen” and by 18, have “had four lovers, a drinking problem, and an abortion.” It’s a world that yields a startling and exceptional collection, and it’s one that comes highly recommended.
Powerful works that examine the violent and erotic lives of characters struggling with mortality.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63988-107-9
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 deliciously dramatic look at how one woman’s past influences her future.
A happily engaged woman is pulled back to her hometown—and her first love—when tragedy strikes.
Billie Wright is living her dream, running a thriving fertility clinic in New York City and engaged to a wonderful trauma surgeon named Dean. Her happily-ever-after meant giving up her life in Wisconsin, where she left behind many friends as well as her high school sweetheart, Mick. Although they’d been deeply in love, when Billie’s ambition pulled her away from home and toward the city, Mick couldn’t handle either the distance or her busy schedule. Billie has finally moved on from that heartbreak—but then she receives a phone call from Mick, the first communication between them in years. Her best friend, Erin, died in a car accident, leaving behind an 11-year-old daughter, Phoebe. Now Billie must return home to help sort Erin’s affairs and provide some kind of comfort to Phoebe while grieving the loss of her best friend. Of course, being back home also means being in close contact with Mick. Their feelings for each other may not have ever gone away, and their proximity leads to big decisions for Billie. Can she ever reconcile her current life in Manhattan with her past in Wisconsin? And which one will be her future? Giffin knows how to do drama, and she ratchets up the stakes with every page as she continues to reveal new obstacles for Billie. The ending wraps up quite neatly, but the nostalgia-filled ride is full of twists and turns that will keep readers flipping the pages.
A deliciously dramatic look at how one woman’s past influences her future.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780593600320
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
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