Lurid, funny, strange, and deftly sorrowing—an important new voice.
Composed of 16 short stories that explore the immigrant experience, this book traces a line from old worlds to new worlds by means of the bloody umbilical cords that stretch between them.
Chang returns to the thematic territory of her debut novel, Bestiary (2020), in these stories that unthread the tangled relationships between mothers and daughter, aunts and cousins, siblings and lovers in the broadly defined Taiwanese immigrant community now living in California. The stories progress through their antic, sometimes manic, often bloody, muddy, orgasmic, or chewed-up and spit-out paces. In “The Chorus of Dead Cousins,” an endlessly proliferating infestation of dead cousins threatens to drive away the speaker’s new wife with their poltergeist mischief, including farting in the minister’s face at the wedding and replacing all of the wife’s teeth with the red-dyed shells of melon seeds in the night. In “Nüwa,” named for the mother goddess of Chinese mythology who is often depicted as having a long, serpentine body, the train that passes the narrator and her sister Meimei’s house at night may also be a snake who is responsible for devouring all the girls that have gone missing in their neighborhood. In “Resident Aliens,” the speaker, her mother, and her seven aunts “share two bedrooms and rent out the basement—what had once been a slaughterhouse, with hooks that snagged on our shadows and no windows but our mouths,” to a series of 26 widows, each upping the fairy-tale ante on the one who came before. Separated into three sections—“Mothers,” “Myths,” and “Moths,”—the book signals its lingual play from the table of contents on. Indeed, the ease with which the various narrators shift into poetic transcendence in their workaday descriptions coupled with the linguistic flexibility of non-native idioms repurposed for a new English in a new world is as much a part of the storytelling as the stories themselves. All this together leaves the reader with a lingering sense that language, as well as life, is infinitely adaptable, no matter the ground on which it is given to grow.
Lurid, funny, strange, and deftly sorrowing—an important new voice.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-24158-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
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
SEEN & HEARD
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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