A welcome, disturbing reminder of the power of magical realism to distort and reveal by turns.
A newly revised translation of Chilean novelist Donoso’s daring, deeply surreal exploration of self, isolation, and Latin American mysticism, including 20 pages of text that was cut from an earlier edition.
A squiggly but unbroken line runs from Kafka’s Metamorphosis through Camus’ The Stranger to this 1970s cult classic and beyond to modern relations like Mariana Enríquez’s Our Share of Night (2023) and Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s Monstrilio (2023). Set in a haunted nunnery overstuffed with grotesqueries, decaying memories, and nightmares both real and imagined, this labyrinthine novel is confounding to understand even as its disturbing imagery and universal dread linger. Combined with a narrator who is so unreliable that his very identity is an enigma, the fragmented narrative heightens the sense of dread and disorientation. In a decidedly nonlinear fashion, we eventually ferret out that the narrator is Humberto Peñaloza, a writer of little means who’s in over his head. He’s been hired by Don Jerónimo de Azcoitía, a wealthy and influential aristocrat being groomed for political office, to write about his family legacy. By the time the story begins, the future senator is obsessed with producing an heir, which his wife, Inés, cannot. Meanwhile, the narrator has somehow become “Mudito”—a supposedly deaf-mute giant banished to one of the Don Jerónimo family’s dilapidated estates, which is now housing 40 outcast women, five orphans, and three nuns. The whole domestic scene doesn’t get any less weird when one deformed child is introduced and the narrator is ordered to hire a menagerie of “first-class monsters,” educators with similar deformities, to look after the offspring, called only “Boy.” With shades of The Island of Doctor Moreau, Don Jerónimo tries alternately to hide and cure his progeny while Humberto/Mudito becomes deeply entwined in the child’s life. Having either fully captured or utterly dismayed his audience by now, Donoso lets his story disintegrate into a surreal mélange of madness, cryptic rituals, and the proverbial abyss staring back. Your mileage may vary.
A welcome, disturbing reminder of the power of magical realism to distort and reveal by turns.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780811232227
Page Count: 464
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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