Long in the telling, but a lively portrait of familial, cultural, and amorous entanglements.
An expansive, complex tale of three sisters and the swath they cut across the world.
Scene: a New Year’s Eve party in Stockholm, where Ina Mikkola meets a young man named Hector. Ina has two sisters there, Anastasia and Evelyn, but she doesn’t want to find them, lest Hector “fall in love with Anastasia, the fun sister, the crazy sister…[and then] he would catch sight of Evelyn and then he would quickly let go of Anastasia’s hand and become transfixed by Evelyn’s eyes.” And so it goes over the 650 pages of Swedish novelist Khemiri’s latest, an ambitious epic that spans half a century and crosses oceans to find—well, never exactly happiness, since the sisters believe they’re doomed by a curse never to find it. An interlocutor throughout is a young man named Jonas, who, like the Mikkola sisters, is half Swedish and half Tunisian: He reveals himself as a purveyor of rumors about them (“their mom worked late and on weekends and wore a lot of perfume and black leather boots and always had her designer handbag full of cash”), befitting of the later role that Jonas plays—not just an observer, but in time a perhaps unreliable narrator within the narration, organized, as Jonas says, just as Khemiri’s is, in seven parts, “and each part covers a shorter and shorter period of time, from a year down to a minute.” It’s a daring concept, but Khemiri pulls it off capably, with that last minute containing an especially moving episode. The longer pieces have their longueurs, with Anastasia, drug-addled and lost, taking much of the story’s oxygen, but each part offers a tantalizing bit of a secret that the reader must pursue to the end in order to understand just how Jonas’ story intertwines with the Mikkolas’, even as their lives have over decades.
Long in the telling, but a lively portrait of familial, cultural, and amorous entanglements.Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780374618896
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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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