Enchanting, mesmerizing, brilliant work.
Seven modern fairy tales by a master of the short form.
Link, who won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2018, has been publishing groundbreaking fiction since her first collection, Stranger Things Happen, came out in 2001. Troubling old, stale boundaries between literary and genre fiction, writing stories that sometimes lean into horror, sometimes into fantasy, and that never shy away from featuring zombies, Link has produced a body of work that is formally original and emotionally rich. Her new collection of fairy tales is no exception. Part of the pleasure here is watching Link reimagine stories we think we know. That’s the case in “The Game of Smash and Recovery,” a futuristic SF tale based on “Hansel and Gretel,” about a sister and brother living on an alien planet alongside vampires and Handmaids (creatures who are both vicious and ingenious) and waiting for their parents to return for them. Similarly, Link reworks “Snow-White and Rose-Red” into “Skinder’s Veil,” a story about a grad student hiding out in a borrowed cabin trying to finish his dissertation and being visited by two women named Rose White and Rose Red, who both sate and beguile him. Another pleasure is seeing Link update certain tropes. In her hands, the Grimms’ enchanted animals are still enchanted animals, but straight princes and princesses are fabulous gay men and lesbian professionals, the ominous woods are airports with endless delays or post-apocalyptic landscapes where people must travel with corpses to keep monsters at bay, characters enter enchanted states by eating gummies, and true horror is a clogged toilet. Most beguiling are the ways these stories complicate the older tales’ tidy conclusions: Is saving your lover from the Queen of Hell really noble if it means he will someday die from a disease? Is being feared by no one just as debilitating as fearing nothing? Is being brave worth the price? This is fiction that pulls you swiftly into its world and then holds you completely, lingering like an especially intense dream.
Enchanting, mesmerizing, brilliant work.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780593449950
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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