A somewhat brash volume of uncomfortable stories that show intermittent hints of promise.
Recklessness and depraved scenarios underpin Dillian’s short stories.
In “Glowing,” the collection’s best story, Logan, a university student spending the summer in her childhood home “with the awful TV and the shag carpets” shakes up the doldrums by peeking in the windows of neighbors at night. Logan’s voyeurism isn’t sexually motivated; her thrills come from the risk of being caught. Becoming more brazen, she skinny-dips in someone’s pool and then, still naked, disturbingly watches a young girl playing with Barbie dolls. The author’s writing is at its strongest when he situates readers in settings or delivers moments of absurdity. “Creep” tells the tale of a meteorologist who agrees to a date with a fan. After noticing her fan’s wristwatch has a poop emoji on it, she learns he’s a gastroenterologist and that he owns many scatologically-themed objects, including a pool floatie, throw pillows, and business cards. “Most of the time it isn’t too bad,” he tells her. “It’s when they’ve eaten a—hrm—porterhouse the night before that things get ugly.” With few exceptions, the characters feel familiar from story to story. The men—among them aging rockstars, a pimp, a dentist, and financial workers—are largely libidinous and careless, and they exhibit derogatory views of women. The women tend to be analogous, with descriptors boiled down to their appearances and ages (usually they are much younger than the men they encounter); they include betrayed wives, sex workers, and a pseudo-Instagram model. The collection explores tough subjects such as mental illness, addiction, adultery, and death. Among the handful of tales that break the mold is “Left Out,” about an overbearing dad whose son is robbed of a spot on the Little League All-Star team. The stories are plot-heavy and fall a bit short on emotion and tension as they move toward ambiguous endings. Unsavory portrayals of females aside, these key missing ingredients may be the biggest flaw here.
A somewhat brash volume of uncomfortable stories that show intermittent hints of promise.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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