An essential entry in this exceptional writer’s corpus.
This reissue of the Australian writer’s first novel suggests the seeds of his peculiar style as he describes a boy’s early life.
Nine-year-old Clement Killeaton looks at the new 1948 calendar in his kitchen, with its picture of Jesus and his parents during their flight from Bethlehem to Egypt. Clement and his parents live in Bassett, near Melbourne, the two Australian cities that pretty much mark the extent of their travels. In this debut, first published in 1974, Murnane establishes motifs that will recur in subsequent work, including Catholicism; horse racing; the effects of different landscapes; the play of light, especially through colored glass; and the play of perception and ideas through the mind. What little plot the book has concerns the efforts of Clement’s father to repeat the big win he had with a horse he trained. Gambling, borrowing money, and tensions over debt pervade the Killeaton household. Elsewhere, the narrative follows Clement, a clever loner who creates miniature racetracks and farms in his backyard, prepares elaborate horse races using marbles, copes with bullies, and tries to learn about sex from schoolgirls who generally delight in deflecting his efforts. Murnane is skilled at closely observed scenes and quite funny at times, but he will likely frustrate readers looking for conventional fiction. The chief pleasures here are his departures from convention, eccentricities of tone and diction, and flights of fancy, all trademarks of his later fiction. In one example, Clement is studying the light coming through his front door’s green-gold glass panel when the narration takes off for two pages of long, complex sentences about colorful creatures and oddly shaped cities and great journeys. It’s a glimpse of the writer finding his own path and an esthetic springboard in the parsing of the ripples and riffs of a boy’s imagination when not waylaid by sex and saints and bullies.
An essential entry in this exceptional writer’s corpus.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-91150-836-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
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 dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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