If it’s indeed the end, Barnes has closed his career gracefully.
An autofictional remembrance from the Booker Prize winner, keeping an eye on the exit.
“This will be my last book,” writes Julian Barnes, the narrator of this novel, early on. Age and illness are deciding factors; diagnosed with a manageable but incurable blood cancer, he fills many of the pages with matters of mortality and the deaths of his literary friends Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis. But he’s also questioning the merits of novel-writing as an endeavor, the way it prompts the writer to exaggerate and betray. As Exhibit A, he points to his role in the relationship of two friends, Stephen and Jean, classmates at Oxford who would later split and then (with Julian’s assistance) reconcile. “You fucking novelist, couldn’t resist, could you?” Jean snaps when she’s ambushed by the two men, resentful of his determination to turn life into a story. Julian had also promised not to use their relationship as novelistic fodder, but his life is a trail of “your harsh forgettings, your dissimulations, your broken promises, your infidelities of word and deed.” Late Barnes has been a mix of tart domestic dramas (The Only Story, 2018) and gentler, Proustian reminiscences (Elizabeth Finch, 2022); this shades closer to the latter, intensified mainly by the pressure created by death’s inevitable approach. The story, such as it is, meanders, but it’s clear that Barnes is writing with a certain urgency, not to take a victory lap but to quit on his own terms, though even his cheer is cut by darkness. (“Let me thank you for your sturdy presence—invisible yet lurking, like my cancer,” he writes to the reader.) Does he mean it when he says he’s done? A book so concerned with a novelist’s urge to lie and betray suggests it’s at least an open question.
If it’s indeed the end, Barnes has closed his career gracefully.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593804506
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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
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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