A wild, fun, and moving page-turner.
With the help of a mysterious drug dealer, a bereaved biochemistry student tries to sell a stash of 200 pills—and also pass her finals—before she’s scheduled to fly to San Francisco at the end of the week for a pharmaceutical internship.
Four weeks before her final exams at Westheimer University in Central Texas, Harvey Moon Keening—called Arvy—lost her mother in a car crash that might have been an accident but that Arvy suspects was the result of what she and her mother called “the funk.” Now Arvy has four tests to take, her aunt’s incontinent foster dog to care for, and a Ziploc bag of 200 pills she thinks are molly to get rid of—the remnant of her “witchy” mother’s “light drug dealing” mostly to women “who had lost a grip on their truer selves.” As it turns out, however, the 200 pills are not molly, but Mona, an “experimental pharmaceutical made for women, by women, meant to treat extreme cases of sexual dysfunction and clitoral atrophy.” Mona, in other words, gives its users overwhelming orgasms, plus a host of side effects including vomiting, blackouts, and waves of existential dread. Arvy has less than 36 hours to sell the pills or somehow come up with $10,000 for Francis Pete, her mother’s charming-but-also-terrifying former “business associate.” Sharp-witted and vulnerable—she brings her mother’s ashes with her everywhere—Arvy is a delightful narrator of this high-stakes adventure. Including her increasingly serious flirtation with Wolf, the college’s drug dealer, and the discovery of a cultish sorority for young women willing to pledge celibacy so they can “convert sexual energy into productive energy” and “use it for a greater purpose,” the adventure is much like Mona itself: a propulsive romp haunted by an ever-present darkness.
A wild, fun, and moving page-turner.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9780316595889
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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 welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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