Frey’s literary affectations don’t get in the way of the good times. Let the revels begin!
A swingers’ party leads to murder in a wealthy Connecticut enclave.
After a seven-year hiatus from publishing adult fiction, Frey has found a groove with this gleefully trashy page-turner set among the one percent: four couples in the fictional town of New Bethlehem whose lives are thrown into chaos when two of the wives plan a spouse-swapping evening. (Rick Moody’s 1994 novel, The Ice Storm, lurks in the background, unnamed: “You know Key Parties were invented here.” “I’ve seen the movie, I’ve read the book.”) Their short-range goals are to sleep with someone other than their husbands (one is a sadistic nightmare, the other impotent), but there’s a long-range goal the reader won’t know about for a while. Frey is in his element here, with his signature breathless, over-the-top, unpunctuated sentences and one-sentence paragraphs; laundry lists of high-end brand names (at one meeting, people sit on Boca do Lobo sofas and Roche Bobois armchairs in Gieves & Hawkes suits); and a pharmacopeia so rich it almost gets you high to read it. (“He had cocaine from Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. Pink coke from L.A., which has slight amounts of ketamine and ecstasy cut into it. He had mushrooms in raw form, in pills, in chocolate. He had twelve different strains of weed, four each of sativa, hybrid, and indica. He had ecstasy from the Netherlands. He had acid from Northern California. And he had the rarest of recreational drugs, quaaludes.”) Wild excess is everywhere, and is often played for laughs. As we happily race toward the sequenced reveals of who is murdered, who did it, and what happens to all these delightful people, Frey pauses to rhapsodize about his home state in a lyrical chapter titled “Color Fields”: “Oh, Connecticut, how beautiful you are.…Your Maples. / Sugar and Red. / In all their motherfucking glory. / And it is glorious.”
Frey’s literary affectations don’t get in the way of the good times. Let the revels begin!Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9798893310269
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Authors Equity
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 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
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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