No shortage of promising premises.
The precipitous rise of an Israeli tech startup dedicated to making rain in the desert.
In a fitting follow-up to his debut story collection, Jerusalem Beach (2021), winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, Gefen explores a speculative premise in a mordantly comic tone. As it opens, the middle-aged inventor Sarai Lilienblum is sighted drinking a martini in the Israeli desert after disappearing from her home for several days. One of the reasons this captures media attention is because “home” is a semi-cooperative tourist lodge atop a cliff overlooking a desert crater which primarily draws visitors interested in the case of a long-disappeared Irish hiker named McMurphy. But Mrs. Lilienblum is not out there looking for McMurphy. She’s testing her latest invention—an unplugged vacuum cleaner that sucks up sand and emits a cloud, which forthwith dissolves into rain. As they say at the press conference for Cloudies, the startup her children, Eli and Naomi, co-found to promote their mother’s invention, “Everyone in this room knows that when Ben-Gurion spoke about making the desert bloom, it was the Cliff he had in mind.” The plot gets most of its energy from the siblings’ pursuit of various funding schemes. After a wealthy neighbor’s offer to underwrite the company falls through, Eli and Naomi pursue a very funny, subtly devised phishing scam under the persona of General Luciano Rodríguez Ancelotti III. Meanwhile, a billionaire named Ben Gould has posted online: “If in four months this device brings down rain on an entire town, I’ll make an offer. No lower than twenty million.” And so, things kick into high gear. The biggest shortcoming of Gefen’s high-spirited fable is character development, often gestured at but never achieved. For example, Sarai Lilienblum often tells her son that they’re “made from the same stuff.” He wonders if this could be true. So does the reader.
No shortage of promising premises.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781662600876
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Astra House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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