Interconnected storylines all arrive at the same conclusion: Messing with memory is messy business.
Five people are impacted by their connections to a memory-removal clinic in this debut novel.
In an alternate near present, a tech company called Nepenthe offers a memory erasure procedure straight out of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Nepenthe patients can elect whether to remain aware they had a memory erased or to forget it ever happened. When new research suggests memories might not be permanently erasable—that they may naturally regenerate—the phenomenon of memory “traces” rollicks Nepenthe with controversy, prompting the company to offer memory restorations. Noor, a doctor at the flagship Nepenthe clinic outside London, begins to mistrust her supervisor, Louise, after observing some shady behavior regarding restorations. The narrative follows four additional characters, each from a close third-person perspective: Mei, a young woman in Kuala Lumpur who believes she is experiencing traces; Finn, an architect in Arizona who suspects his wife erased the memory of an extramarital affair; Oscar, a man in Marrakech who barely has any memory of who he is; and William, an ex-cop in West Sussex who wants to remove a memory that is causing him PTSD. The premise is intriguing and becomes more compelling as it progresses (particularly pertaining to Louise’s psychology), but the story takes a while to pick up steam. The present-tense narration drifts around in time, heavy on abstract questions and light on descriptive scenes, making it tough to stay grounded in the action. Harkin frequently describes each characters’ confusion—“Louise, what have you done? / Why did you do it? / What’s next?” asks Noor, on three separate lines—but struggles to differentiate their voices in other meaningful ways. References to philosophers like Sartre, Hume, and Locke aim for cleverness and depth, hitting the mark as often as not.
Interconnected storylines all arrive at the same conclusion: Messing with memory is messy business.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982164-32-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Even when it stress-tests your senses, this sprawling depiction of gay life in Jamaica is galvanizing.
Equal parts detective story and sociocultural history, James’ new novel takes a deep, harrowing dive into the tragic consequences of violent homophobia.
The “disappearers” of the title are Orrin Turner and Matt Chin, who dominate this decades-spanning saga without being seen or heard through most of it. They are two of the gay men—“battymen” in Jamaican idiom—who show up at a Kingston house on a June night in 1988 to rehearse for a production of Fortune and Men’s Eyes, a play set in a prison. The group is savagely attacked by a mob, leaving one of the actors dead, one blinded for life, and the rest bloodied and injured. Survivors of the attack spend most of the succeeding years recovering from both physical and psychic wounds, among them Jordan Brown, who describes himself as “full-time battyman, sometime prostitute. Occasional thorn in somebody’s backside,” and Eddy Porteous, who arrived too late at that fateful rehearsal to become a casualty but nonetheless is haunted, like Jordan, by the inexplicable disappearance of both Turner and Chin since the attack. Despite constant carping between them, Jordan and Eddy team up roughly six years after the attack in search of clues to their friends’ whereabouts. While the process yields few hints, their inquiries on the streets, in bars, and at other gathering places for Kingston’s battymen contribute to a grim but illuminating collective portrait of the country’s gay community at a time when the AIDS crisis was in its early, often frightening stages and of the alarmingly widespread homophobia leading to that brutal attack. As in his Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), James brings multilayered life to a troubling era in his homeland’s recent history. He engages with his landscapes and the diverse characters populating them with intensity, passion, and bountiful, often graphic detail. With the same affinity for Dickensian storytelling he’s shown in his sword-and-sorcery epics, James tells this searingly realistic tale through interview fragments, journal entries, letters, and, in recreating the horrific attack, with random, frantic voices that leave unsettling echoes.
Even when it stress-tests your senses, this sprawling depiction of gay life in Jamaica is galvanizing.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9780593717202
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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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