A bold story of intergenerational trauma that creates spooky scares out of real-life atrocities.
The legacy of one house in Hong Kong haunts a woman in Vancouver, British Columbia, and her teenage daughter.
In 1938, when kidnappers steal 13-year-old Gigi off the street in Hong Kong and lock her inside Nam Koo Terrace, she finds that the ghosts of several young women—a daughter, a mistress, and a maid—already haunt the halls. The palatial estate turned brothel is a prison for the living and the dead. Decades later, in Vancouver, Gigi’s great-granddaughter Alice begins losing time. A single mother of two who owns and operates her own cloth-diaper business, Alice has a lot of irons in the fire. She turns to alcohol to self-medicate, a symptom even her bartender situationship, Jas, notices. Maybe, she thinks, the booze is why she can’t remember packing orders for shipping, or completing her neglected housework, or telling Jas she’s ready to take things to the next level the way he wants. Unbeknownst to Alice, her 14-year-old daughter, Luna, who has always suffered from night terrors, is having dreams of Nam Koo Terrace. Meanwhile, Luna’s former nanny, Pinky, who still lives downstairs, notices a change in Alice—a change that could mean a monster from Pinky’s past has finally caught up to her. Lee’s novel is a claustrophobic tale told on an epic scale. Sections detailing the realities of Gigi’s life as a comfort woman are handled gracefully, without being either lurid or vague. Alice’s mother and grandmother step in as point-of-view characters late in the novel, completing the chain of women whose lives the ghosts of Nam Koo Terrace forever altered. Each woman’s story is as captivating—and each character as rounded—as the next. Lee has written a genuinely frightening story of rape, abuse, and neglect.
A bold story of intergenerational trauma that creates spooky scares out of real-life atrocities.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9781645662808
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Erewhon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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