Erudite, eloquent, and bittersweet—these stories are like chewing on the orange rind for a last bitter taste of the drink.
Eleven stories of desire that traipse across their landscapes, rearranging the reader’s expectations as they go.
In Berlin, an American expatriate organizes a party, rescinds the invitations, and then finds the party thrown anyway with consequences that belie the devil-may-care attitude of the guests. In Krakow, a woman in tech with a questionable romantic past, and an even more questionable nipple piercing, runs into an old flame with a pressing problem of inheritance, atrocity, and identity that he’d love for her to help him solve. On Virginia’s Jefferson Davis Highway, a woman and her husband—a newly minted citizen—travel through the legacies of American history to visit her estranged Korean War veteran uncle who’s trapped by his own bitter legacies. Populated by fey expats, ardent psychiatrists, arch historians, and impossible friends who spin in and out of proximity to their narrators as they travel their enchanted orbits, Stevens’ stories echo with a kind of urbane fairy-tale self-assertion that encourages the reader to stop and gaze in reverie at the articulation of the scenes, even as the stories’ main characters go whirling off into their chaotic nights. Characters overlap in many of the stories. Rob the Ex in the punchy “Weimar Whore” is another character’s “kinky historian” in “Ghost Pains.” Sylvia who “lights up a room in her light-blue dress” in “The Party” is also Sylvia the hostile hostess in the final story of the collection, “A New Book of Grotesques.” Yet, even the stories that do not share this revolving cast of acquaintances or have a gridwork of city streets in common are united by Stevens’ impeccable artistry, which manages to overlay the gauzy romance of the stranger in a strange land atop the grim economic and interpersonal realities that so often accompany relative youth, relative freedom, and relative love.
Erudite, eloquent, and bittersweet—these stories are like chewing on the orange rind for a last bitter taste of the drink.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781913505844
Page Count: 304
Publisher: And Other Stories
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.
Infertility, family secrets, and alpacas all figure in Quindlen’s latest meditation on mothering and domesticity.
Polly’s life looks enviable. Happily married to the adoring Mark—a vet at the Bronx Zoo—she teaches English at a private Manhattan girls’ school and loves her work. She has a protective older brother and close girlfriends, who’ve formed a book club where no one is expected to read the book. But Polly desperately wants a child and, at 42, knows time is running out. She and Mark have gone through endless fertility treatments, to no avail. Meantime, Polly’s friends have given her a DNA kit as a jokey birthday gift, and something mysterious shows up in the test results. Then, out of nowhere, a young woman contacts her, suggesting they may be related. That’s not all: Polly feels estranged from her mother, a revered judge who’s insufficiently maternal in her daughter’s view. Her father has always cherished her, but he’s in a nursing home now with a rapidly failing mind. And something is amiss with her best pal, Sarah. Quindlen’s trademark empathy is evident throughout, and her wry humor leavens some of the serious goings-on. Early on, Mark and Polly visit a fertility clinic with photos of babies in the waiting room; for Polly, “it felt…like a Weight Watchers facility with hot fudge sundae pictures on the wall.” Then we meet these charming alpacas, humming and pronking, on a farm run by an earth mother, whose wisdom will help Polly get on with her life. The plot swerves around a bit, there may be one surplus narrative thread (e.g., Polly’s star student Josephine running aground after graduation), and at the end, the author ties things up too neatly, pushing the “circle of life” theme too hard.
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593734605
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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