A captivating tale about betrayal that presents impressively complex characters.
In this novel, an academic overachiever ends up in prison and, upon his release, struggles to restart his ravaged life.
The child of demanding Haitian immigrants—his father is a lawyer and his mother a nurse— Jean Valuer is ambitiously making progress on the “American Dream Highway.” After he earns a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Cornell University, he pursues a master’s from New York University, with aspirations to write novels and teach. But those dreams are destroyed when he’s arrested for drug possession. He is caught holding a bag filled with drugs, unbeknown to him, that was given to him by his best friend, Marcus Ramirez. Jean is eventually released from prison as part of a program to deter the spread of Covid-19, and, now 27 years old and free, he finds the world an inhospitable place for a felon. His girlfriend, Julie Matthews, abandons him; his parents shun him in disgust; and he discovers that it is nearly impossible to find a job with a criminal record. In this thoughtfully meditative novel by Mondesir, Jean is pulled between his desire to find meaning in his new circumstances and his burning need to exact revenge on Marcus for his treachery: “Betrayal by someone you love is like disembowelment; it eviscerates your sense of self-worth, and causes a sort of death.” Jean’s character is drawn with remarkable subtlety—a bookish, ruminative young man, he is simply too imaginative to foreclose the possibility of redemption, but also too intelligent to see it as plausible. Moreover, while the author is careful not to reduce the protagonist to mere symbolism—Jean is a fully realized human being—he is microcosmic of the dangers faced by African Americans in the United States, and the lonely dislocation caused by the pandemic. This is a powerful work that dramatically captures the fragility of life as well as the perseverance of the human spirit.
A captivating tale about betrayal that presents impressively complex characters.Pub Date: May 15, 2025
ISBN: 9798230176879
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 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
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