A promising debut notable for sharp characterizations and a vividly conveyed sense of time and place.
Creative partnership or romantic relationship? Berkeley undergrads who connect over his music and her ideas about it spend eight years agonizing over which is more important.
Brickley’s first novel lovingly evokes the indie scene of the early 21st century—and lots of other pop music as well—while deftly crafting the bumpy emotional journey of her insufferably opinionated, touchingly vulnerable heroine. Narrator Percy Marks clicks with singer/songwriter Joe Morrow from the moment they bond in the fall of 2000, in classic collegiate fashion, over the distinction between “a perfect song” and “a perfect recording.” He appreciates her critiques of his songs, which they both know make them better, and when Joe’s girlfriend, Zoe, tells Percy that she’s gay, Percy moves on her long-simmering attraction to Joe. It’s definitely reciprocated, but Joe tells her he values their work together too much to complicate it. This back and forth goes on while Percy gets an MFA at Columbia and Joe tours and self-releases his first album—“with special thanks” to Percy, who told him she didn’t want co-writing credit. She’s not so sure about that decision four years later, long after she’s told him she can’t work with him anymore, when she finds a song she co-wrote on his second album, with the same evasive “special thanks” credit. Percy now lives in San Francisco, where she writes a music blog in tandem with a vintage early-aughts job as an “intelligence specialist” searching out “trendsetters” for corporate brands looking for street cred. Zoe, now her best friend and roommate, offers a running reality check on Percy’s tortured, ambivalent feelings about Joe and her future career goals as they navigate the years from 9/11 to Barack Obama’s election. Brickley’s sensitive depiction of Percy’s (very) slowly growing professional and personal self-confidence will appeal even to readers who miss most of the pop-culture references and are weary of the “will they/won’t they” plot.
A promising debut notable for sharp characterizations and a vividly conveyed sense of time and place.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593799086
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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
SEEN & HEARD
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