Another smart, entertaining dispatch from Waidner's bizarro world.
Nothing is as it seems in this bizarre satire of the literary life by London-based author Waidner.
When Corey Fah is named the winner of the Award for the Fictionalisation of Social Evils, they’re a bit nonplussed. The author attended the online prize announcement wearing a T-shirt and joggers, and is sent to Koszmar Circus, somewhere in the “international capital” where they live, to pick up their trophy. They soon find themself eyeing a UFO: “Circa half a metre tall, it hovered directly in my eyeline. It radiated neon beige, what a concept. I just stood there, one hand on my head, the other on my hip, considering the likelihood.” They discover they’re not alone: Also present in the circus is a fawn, with “four spider’s legs” and “multiple sets of eyes, like that seraph-filtered kitty on Instagram.” The deer, which they name Bambi Pavok, follows them home, and Corey soon learns that the UFO was their trophy and the prize committee is annoyed that they didn’t retrieve it. Meanwhile, Corey and their long-suffering partner, Drew Szumski, an interpreter, become alarmed when the wormhole-obsessed host of their favorite television series, St Orton Gets to the Bottom of It, has a small meltdown on air. Add to this “a one-toothed rabbit with a white chest, flushed cheeks, and a set of behavioural problems,” a possibly time-traveling playwright, and Corey’s own ambivalence about their newfound notoriety and you get another gleefully anarchic novel from Waidner, who was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize (the real-life Award for the Fictionalisation of Social Evils, one supposes) for Sterling Karat Gold (2023). This is a deeply funny and unrelentingly bizarre look at the vagaries of literary success, and although Waidner loads it with their trademark absurdity, it’s still grounded by the author’s straight-faced (but lively) prose. It’s beginning to look like there’s nothing the immensely talented Waidner can’t do.
Another smart, entertaining dispatch from Waidner's bizarro world.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781644452691
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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