An entertainingly eclectic, if self-indulgent, journey through the odder corners of existence.
Fourteen stories featuring deeply weird characters moving through surreal and—yes—droll circumstances.
If it’s the case that the opening story of a collection sets the tone for it, then readers can learn a lot from the opening of Smyles’ third book—following Dating Tips for the Unemployed (2016)—which begins with a glossary of “terms not found in this book.” Sample entries include “Apostrophe: any event occurring after a rophe” and “Lemon Merengue: to move like a whipped dessert.” This dad-joke bubble finally bursts after three pages, largely replaced by an approach that is part Monty Python and part René Magritte. (Though there are plenty of groaners like the above throughout.) Smyles knows her humor tends toward the surreal; she explicitly invokes that school in stories like “Exquisite Bachelor,” a nod to the exquisite corpse game favored by surrealists; the story itself imagines central figures of surrealism, from Dalí to Breton, competing on the reality show The Bachelor. The collection is bookended by two long stories: The opener, “Medusa’s Garden,” concerns a love triangle among the Guild of the Living Statues. In the closer, “O Lost,” a lovelorn professor meets a mysterious smuggler and her motley crew of friends who force the professor to question the very nature of reality. If any art is subjective, funny art is doubly so. Smyles’ jokes miss their mark as often as they land, partly due to the long, sometimes nearly hallucinatory tangents that pervade the collection, which can feel like Smyles merely writing for her own amusement. But at their best, the stories are erudite, original, and surprisingly poignant, as in the memorable “Contemporary Grammar,” in which a love story is told entirely through diagrammed sentences on a fifth grade English test.
An entertainingly eclectic, if self-indulgent, journey through the odder corners of existence.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-933527-61-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Turtle Point
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
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 tart meditation on narrative and integrity.
A writer’s meeting with his mentor goes complicatedly awry.
Lerner’s slim fourth novel opens with an unnamed narrator arriving in Providence, Rhode Island, on a magazine assignment to interview Thomas, a professor who’s “among the world’s most renowned thinkers about art and technology.” Just before leaving his hotel, though, he accidentally knocks his phone in a sink, bricking it. His sole means of recording the interview gone, he triages, suggesting that he and Thomas conduct a pre-interview that evening and do a full-dress conversation the next day, after he can get the device fixed. The setup seems thin, but, this being a Lerner novel, rich ethical and philosophical questions fly off it: He’s concerned with the ways that an interview poisons authentic conversation, with our over-reliance on technology, and the moral dilemmas of talking to an unreliable source. (Thomas, 90, seems distracted and sometimes dotty.) Lerner’s true subject isn’t an interview so much as it is misapprehension and miscommunication; after the meeting with Thomas in the first section, the second and third parts are concerned with characters’ failures to understand something about each other, be it a romantic partner’s wishes or a child’s eating disorder. That last challenge makes for some of the most vivid, offbeat, and affecting writing Lerner has delivered—a surprise, given his fiction is typically marked by DeLillo-esque sangfroid. Another surprise is the relative embrace of a conventional story arc, as the narrator faces a reckoning about living in a “deepfake” world. This is slighter fare for Lerner but surprisingly potent given its length, interested in the ways that we manufacture our identities and how technology speeds the process along.
A tart meditation on narrative and integrity.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780374618599
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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