Weaves historical fiction, Japanese literary icons, and meditations on love into a novel that’s remarkable on many levels.
A woman in contemporary Tokyo dreams of other lives—as a courtesan in Edo, then a lady’s maid in the ninth century—all to help her confront the stages of love in her own marriage.
An intertextual story of longing, fidelity, and the role of women in Japanese culture, the novel begins with 2-year-old Riko falling in love with Naruya. Though they eventually marry, it is an unhappy arrangement—she worships Naruya, but he is an unrepentant womanizer. With the help of former monk Mr. Takaoka (who shares the name of a ninth-century Buddhist prince), she learns a kind of magic: to enter nightly into a single, continuous dream, one that lasts for years and that she remembers when she’s awake. These dreamworlds span years of her waking life. First she is Shungetsu, from the Edo period, a child sold to work in the Yoshiwara pleasure district, where she learns to become a courtesan. Mr. Takaoka enters her dreamworld in the form of samurai Takada, and the two fall in love. When this story comes to its tragic conclusion, an even earlier narrative springs up: She is a lady-in-waiting during the Heian period. Her princess is married to Narihira, who, like Naruya, conducts countless affairs. The prose, conversational and effervescent, belies the depth of the novel’s complexity; both dream narratives take their frameworks from other texts: The Tales of Ise, partially written by the ninth-century poet Narihira, who is the hero of Riko’s dream, and the 1987 fantasy novel Takaoka’s Travels by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa. Riko can dream these stories because she’s read the sources, but her own life is also a reflection of these framing texts, and so we get them in triplicate, variations on a tale of female submission, negotiation, and freedom.
Weaves historical fiction, Japanese literary icons, and meditations on love into a novel that’s remarkable on many levels.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9781593768058
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
