A compelling exercise in worldbuilding and genre blending that toggles among the recent past, present, and near future.
Set primarily in California, this short-story collection mixes the mundane and the bizarre with an authority stemming from its concrete sense of place.
This collection of linked stories takes its name from a hypothesis positing that small mammals may grow larger on islands while large mammals may grow smaller. While teaching a geography class at San Diego State University at the outset of the Obama administration, a professor reflects on how the theory manifests in her home country, a nameless island nation run by a dictator known for dressing in skimpy bathing suits. Ostensibly protecting her small daughter from bad influences, a San Francisco mother takes a dislike to a clique of schoolgirls who hang out near her home, inviting more trouble than she can possibly realize. Some of the stories stay firmly or mostly anchored in realism, focusing on characters and conflicts that feel all too plausible: A child of divorce forced to move from Oklahoma to Minnesota disappears; a perpetually single woman is invited camping by an old friend; a survivalist teaches her nephew the ruthless ways of the wild. Other stories, however, veer into supernatural or dystopian territory. A Hollywood agent has a monstrous encounter during a drug trip. A professional image rehabilitator “polish[es]” reputations for a living. Characters sometimes recur, typically in the form of passing references, but certain objects, events, and threats serve as the overarching throughline: a set of teeth extracted from the mouth of a 17th-century Norwegian explorer, mysterious mounds of human bones that fuel rumors of a serial killer on the prowl, the tragic death of a cosmonaut in a spaceflight accident, the constant specter of environmental disaster. Some stories feel tighter and more polished than others, and the collection as a whole could be more cohesive, but the overall effect is appealingly weird, as if the uncanny valley took literary form.
A compelling exercise in worldbuilding and genre blending that toggles among the recent past, present, and near future.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781982122201
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.
Sasha Cadell has survived against all odds, holding onto her loved ones and strangers as they take their last breaths—and that’s why she’s known as Death’s Angel.
For six years Sasha has lived in Haven, the underground society built to withstand nuclear war. Since the war, since her family’s deaths, since discovering she doesn’t get sick like everyone else does, Sasha’s life has been full of death and overfull with grief. While working in the Ward, Haven’s limited hospital, she stays with patients as they die. When Tristian Hayes, a unit commander of the Force, ends up as her patient, hanging on for his life, she pleads for him to stay alive. He does—upending her bleak ritual as Death’s Angel. Hoping to forget everything she’s seen and to numb the pain, Sasha leaves the Ward in favor of a role with a pickax, expanding Haven’s tunnels. Tristian, fiercely determined and stunningly stubborn, recruits Sasha to the Force for a vital mission aboveground. The story picks up steam with Sasha’s intense training to become the medic for Tristian’s tightknit unit. Together, they bear the weight of their unit’s survival and all that’s left of humankind. While in training, Sasha struggles to discern friends and enemies, but nothing is as challenging as facing her own demons. In this prequel to her debut novel, Conform (2025), Sullivan tries to accomplish a lot with both the worldbuilding and plot machinations, resulting in a convoluted story and flattened characters. The plot doesn’t have a satisfying payoff, but the romantic tension between Sasha and Tristian will keep readers engaged.
Let’s hope for more from the next book set in this world.Pub Date: March 24, 2026
ISBN: 9798217091027
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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