A messy, sad-girl novel that’s too improbable to fully enjoy.
A young artist stumbles headfirst into adulthood.
The unnamed and unmoored protagonist of Shannon’s debut novel has reluctantly moved back in with her parents: “I swapped the city I found for the city I came from.” Overeducated and underemployed, she deals with her lack of direction by becoming obsessed with cleaning. When she gets a job as a cleaner at a local art gallery and meets fellow artist Isabella, her life begins to change. The two women immediately hook up despite the fact that Isabella lives with her successful, rich, and bland boyfriend, Paul. As the narrator becomes more enmeshed in their lives, she thinks she may be able to have it all (“I wanted both of them at the same time. I wanted both of them in bed”). When Isabella leaves one day without a word, the narrator begins to slip into a life that doesn’t belong to her. Written in stream-of-consciousness style, the novel is told in one long gulp with no chapters, paragraph breaks, or quotation marks. The form situates you directly in the protagonist’s mind, which can feel claustrophobic because she’s an absolute disaster. Her thoughts ping-pong among sex, art, death, money, children, thrifting, cleaning, cooking, and everything in between. She is flaky, a liar, and makes decisions that seem detached from reality. Unfortunately, the novel is both too absurd and not absurd enough. The plot, when it surfaces between the narrator’s thoughts, is so outlandish at times that it’s distracting. Despite this, Shannon has imbued the novel with a sardonic humor that serves as a bright spot. When the artist sits down with her family to fill out the census, she tells them she’s not heterosexual to little reaction—and thinks, “I questioned whether pure, uncut indifference was in fact homophobic or progressive.” These moments of levity help the book become less mired in the narrator’s seemingly endless nonsensical loop.
A messy, sad-girl novel that’s too improbable to fully enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9781668223086
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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 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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