An immersive and engaging interior chronicle of young people and their enduring educators.
Journalist and Manhattan schoolteacher Chanko presents a novel that explores the lives of an educator and his students during an eventful school year.
In a school on New York City’s Upper East Side, Martin Jordanowski is teaching his first Writing Enrichment cluster class of the 2007-2008 school year. It’s an enormous feat for him just to establish minor connections with the troubled students in his class, many of them in their mid-teens. The student body contains a number of emotionally disturbed teenagers, mostly boys, who reside in shelters when not in school. Sassy Kandra McKissick and cocky, jealous Shay are in one of his classes; their lives and others’ are explored in depth as the novel progresses. Kandra lives with an abusive stepmother and has a penchant for physical violence at school; Shay considers her his property, and things get messy when Martin takes an interest in Kandra. Martin, who’s known to his students as “Mr. J,” is a 25-year-old from a small Indiana town who’s unwilling to surrender control of his classroom to a student body that, in its formative years, has already seen a great many difficulties before reaching the eighth grade. But he becomes emotionally involved with some of the students, which costs him dearly. He’s also contending with the solemn aftermath of his sister Cassie’s recent death by overdose and the guilt he feels after distancing himself from his family in Indiana, which made him miss precious opportunities to see his sister before her death.
Martin must also deal with a teacher’s suspicious “accident” and a constant stream of threats and rumors ricocheting around the campus; he soothes himself with occasional drinks from flasks of whiskey as he navigates his way through it all. His fellow teachers include Shirley Holmes, a doting mother to her reckless 26-year-old daughter, Coretta, whom she hopes will follow in her footsteps (and who also happens to be Kandra’s cousin). Other teachers offering Martin counsel are gym teacher Paul Massaro, who gives him a cautionary welcome to the school, warning him of unsavory student behavior and an administration that always bends in favor of the students. These elements—as well as plenty of melodrama—all coalesce brilliantly and immerse readers in a world where education takes a back seat to interpersonal upheavals. This is a story about how instructors clash with embittered kids eager for attention. Chanko juggles the presentation of all these characters and their issues with immense skill. Because the novel focuses on a different character in each chapter, it effectively presents a prism of perspectives as each of the characters struggles with their own unique challenges over the course of the story. The author combines realistic dialogue, complex contemporary social issues, and characters to root for in this narrative. The result is a masterful tapestry of strife and resiliency as teachers adapt to the diverse learning styles, comprehension speeds, and personalities of the many kids in their care.
An immersive and engaging interior chronicle of young people and their enduring educators.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798886798616
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Luminare Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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