A smoldering story of entrapment and escape.
A skater-turned-photographer descends into the Phoenix party scene in Duffy’s literary novel.
Riley never meant to be a photographer; he was a professional skateboarder until a bad landing put him in a coma. When he woke up, his job on the tour was gone, and now he feels dizzy whenever he tries to get back on a board. Eventually, he settles for becoming a Phoenix-based skate photographer instead. From shooting skaters, he moves to parties, where he becomes the unofficial candid nightlife photographer of a beautiful model called Ashli Rose. After that, his career takes off. “Riley, the photo guy,” he narrates. “Ashli’s photo guy. My name loosely strung to hers a passport to every party, a seat at every table, a bottle or a can or a rolled up twenty passed my way. Head nods and hugs and so many smiles when I entered a room whether I was pointing my lens or not.” It’s a scene in which nobody is interested in feeling their emotions, which is just fine for Riley, who blunders from one bed or bender to the next without much thought as to why he is doing it. By the time the party lifestyle starts to catch up with his new friends—who begin dropping dead with alarming frequency—it may be too late for Riley to find his way back to normal life. Duffy has a talent for sketching the brilliant desert landscape of Phoenix and its surroundings, both geographically and psychologically. “Light for light’s sake,” the Chicago-born Riley says of Christmas-bulb-strung palm trunks. “To illuminate our path to the next booth or barstool. Meaningless here where years didn’t end, but simply reset. Where time folded in on itself, and as the calendar turned, we celebrated with debaucherous parties.” The novel’s characters and their plots never quite achieve the level of pathos that the book’s language and themes are so clearly calibrated to evoke, but fans of a certain tradition of masculine literary fiction will find in Riley a kindred damaged spirit.
A smoldering story of entrapment and escape.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9798218456955
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Picket Fire
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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