A stunning ode to a landscape that the author knows intimately.
A diverse collection of nature poetry by a queer, neurodivergent poet from Appalachia.
This book was inspired by the author’s small mountain hometown in North Carolina, and throughout these poems, Day reminisces about its beauty. She opens with “a little night music,” which reads like symphonic instructions to a composer. The speaker in “of earth:” wonders how Mother Nature felt on the day humans were born, while in “three sisters trail,” she “lay[s] traps for juniper.” The speaker discloses her deepest fears and a secret in “gently.” A daughter who defies all expectations (in a bad way) is the subject of “the accidental birth of a mouth,” while “field guide for the appalachian summer” lists all the necessary elements for that sweltering season, from the basic (“a body of water” and “a willow tree”) to the unexpected (an “empty church” and a “carved death stone”). The poem “places i wish I haven’t hidden” is a numbered list that explores all the forms of making oneself invisible, and “earthly pleasures” enumerates the sights, sounds, and scents of a Southern childhood. Day plays with form throughout, keeping the reader engaged, and her descriptions thrum with energy: She recalls how “the grass sizzles, seizes my bare feet” as she and her companions “cradle crawling pulses between our knuckles” while catching insects. Her verbs are lively and evocative as she listens to “the stony bank crackle” and watches the “juncos glitter,” and her metaphors dazzle with acorns that are “messy fleshy hearts” and a hummingbird that’s a “a clock, tightly wound.” The sole flaw of this collection is a failure to follow through on a detailed exploration of the effects of “climate change and a carbon-based economy,” noted in the introduction; instead, the narrative centers itself firmly in nostalgia. However, the author notes that she’s donating profits from the second edition of this collection to the Indigenous Environmental Network.
A stunning ode to a landscape that the author knows intimately.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-57-890141-1
Page Count: 84
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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