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
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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