An ambitious if didactic saga about overcoming one’s past in order to build a better future.
A dispirited soldier learns lessons from a preternaturally wise carpenter in Zacaroli’s philosophical debut novel.
Danat, a young soldier haunted by his experiences during a war—one that destroyed his home and killed his entire family—wanders into a desert town and immediately spies a beautiful woman with a broken cart. Wanting to help her fix her cart but lacking the skills to do so, he finds the town carpenter and offers to sell the man his labor in exchange for him repairing the cart. The carpenter sees through the young man’s scheme, and though he refuses to help him seduce the woman, he does invite Danat to become his apprentice. The apprentice bristles at the carpenter’s oblique lessons, which seem to have little to do with his trade, but after Danat helps defend the town from a marauding army, the carpenter releases him from his service, asking him to help lead the townspeople to safety before a second attack arrives. It is on the final night before the apprentice and the townspeople leave that the carpenter—who cannot go with them—finally teaches Danat the lessons he needs to know. But will those lessons be enough to face the trials ahead of him as he seeks to be a leader in his newly chosen community? The novel recalls Coelho’s The Alchemist (1988) in its blend of folkloric elements—including a minimalist, expository narrative style—with long conversations informed by psychology and spirituality. “The fear that has tormented you most of your life is teaching you something very important,” the carpenter tells his apprentice. “When you learn what it is, the fear will subside like the floodwaters after a sudden downpour.” While Zacaroli does an admirable job keeping the plot moving, with a large cast of characters and sequences straight out of an action movie, the reader will nevertheless require a high tolerance for self-help speak to fully enjoy this novel.
An ambitious if didactic saga about overcoming one’s past in order to build a better future.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9798822968530
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
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 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
SEEN & HEARD
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