A scattershot mix of cataloguing, introspection, and philosophizing.
In Bloom’s novel set in 2023, a man searches for meaning in his life and career after the death of his lifelong love.
As the story opens, Tokyo-based American Sebastian Reuter is an accountant, painter, former actor, and all-around learned man who finds out that Valeria, the woman he’s loved for 23 years, has died. He characterizes her demise in spiritual terms—specifically, as yet another in a long series of battles between God and the Devil: “The Devil killed her today.” Over the course of the novel, readers learn more details about Valeria and her backstory. It’s revealed that Reuter hadn’t seen her in three years when she died, ever since she married another man, but her passing still stings and sends him spiraling through memories of his past life when he returns to Los Angeles to attend her funeral. In LA, he meets a stranger named Freya, and they have a fun, light dalliance—exactly the kind of encounter that Reuter needs at the moment. However, he doesn’t stick around for very long, as he’s needed back in Tokyo, where he meets another woman, Famke, whose husband is unfaithful to her; she’s looking to have a fling of her own. Briefly, there is a hint of tension as Reuter weighs his encounters with Freya and Famke in his mind, ruminating on which relationship might suit him better. However, in both his encounters and his reflections, Reuter remains detached and clinical—a trait that he attributes to his earlier acting training in which he learned to separate himself from his emotions. This feeling of emotional separation, while consistent with his character, seeps into the rest of the novel.
What begins as a Bret Easton Ellis–style cataloguing of brands (“He had a Constantin Vacheron watch and Brunello Cucinelli shoes, a Tom Ford suit, and a black tie too skinny for the occasion”) descends into mantras that, unlike in Ellis’ work, never quite read as satiric: “I was quitting smoking. Whenever I stopped, I always became Terminator, the Viking Surfer Terminator Driver of the willpower to do all I was capable.” Halfway through the novel, its conventional structure breaks down as Reuter digs into his notions about religion (“The Devil is challenging. But I can’t be harmed under God’s protection. Then, is it God or the Devil in disguise?”) as well as his ongoing work involving quantum theory (“My quantum mechanics physics spatial geospatial intelligent general and special theory draft story work in progress was a train of thought frame of mind-body consciousness conceptual anchoring referential point…”). He also touches on a range of other topics, including investment strategy, resulting in tangents that often border on incoherency. Overall, the work offers an unusual glimpse into the mind of a modern man who’s clearly not doing very well. Some readers will find the novel’s breakdown of typical story structure and descent into hyperspecific rumination to be an offbeat and engaging choice. However, others are likely to find it tedious and off-putting.
A scattershot mix of cataloguing, introspection, and philosophizing.Pub Date: May 5, 2025
ISBN: 9781944527471
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Natural Press
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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