A truly unique voice.
A chance reunion with a childhood friend sends a young woman reeling through the surreal taxonomy of her life.
Seven is 24 years old, works in the laundry room of a chiropractor’s office, and still lives at home with her mother and grandmother. Her days consist of a monotony measured in repeated sensation: the “pigskin” texture of the thin towels, the “symphonic” sound of the chiropractor’s urine stream in the laundry room toilet, the jellylike residue of the soap dispenser that “dribbl[es] like a nosebleed” and must be wiped clean every hour. At home, Seven follows similarly long-established rituals, watching television with her mother and her grandmother in the “apartment [they have] been renting since before [she] was born.” Though her mother encourages her to move out on her own someday, there seems to be nothing that could shake Seven from this cycle—which serves to forestall the vision of a girl’s future her grandmother once presented to her: “You’re born. You leave your family before it can eat you. You are eaten by another family and give birth to its children. You make your life a service to others, and in exchange you are never alone with your desires.” Then, while cleaning one of the chiropractor’s treatment rooms, Seven comes face-to-face with Cecilia, a beloved childhood friend and subject of Seven’s most closely guarded fantasies. Cecilia’s reemergence in Seven’s life instigates a flurry of uncontrolled memory wherein the girls’ shared experiments with forbidden sensuality express themselves in Seven’s desire to consume Cecilia’s very being, to enshroud her beloved in the cavities of her body, to become her—if not in this life, then perhaps in the next. An erotic, dissociative exploration of obsession, this slender novella reconfigures desire as a corporeal function as integral as breathing or digestion. While the visceral, disorienting nature of the language sometimes obscures the images themselves, the work of reading this book leaves the reader with the same feeling one has after eating a particularly indulgent meal—satiation, with the knowledge of more hunger to come.
A truly unique voice.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781566897075
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
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
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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