A compilation of intense, penetrative character observations.
Dorfman’s collection of eight short stories explores themes of mental illness, familial rifts, and emotional uncertainty.
The book opens with “The Happiest Place,” about a family on vacation at a Florida theme park. An overenthusiastic father tries to orchestrate the greatest day of their lives, but it appears past traumas don’t disappear easily. “Rotini” is about a family meal, after which the parents plan to explain to their young daughter that they intend to divorce. The title story follows a man who strikes his spouse and then, consumed by depression, shame, and self-loathing, becomes obsessed with achieving a perfect bowling score. “The Porch” is about a lonely older man who develops an unexpected connection with a boy he catches playing a disgusting prank. The curious “What Do You Want Ferret?” introduces a man intent on buying a particular ferret to placate his partner only to encounter another man who beats him to it; the latter believes the animal houses the soul of his deceased father. The collection closes with “Beachgoers,” in which a couple have contrasting reactions to an encounter with a lost child. Dorfman’s writing excavates the complexities of relationships, from their mysterious beginnings to their often bitter endings. The story “Scar,” for instance, ponders how people know very little about each other when they first meet. Dorfman pinpoints this sense deftly in the space of a brief sentence: “She was an unknown entity, a thumbnail of a true human being.” Dorfman also effortlessly captures unexpected shifts of emotion by employing fresh, thought-provoking similes: “As she had many times before, she imagined him with their future children. The usual clear image was shaken, unsteady, like an old VHS tape that had degraded over time.” Compelling plotlines create veneers of normality that fall away to reveal underlying pain; the result is a dark collection that readers will likely want to finish in one sitting.
A compilation of intense, penetrative character observations.Pub Date: June 11, 2022
ISBN: 979-8985579109
Page Count: 118
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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