A funny and tender novel about life’s best and worst punchlines.
A lesbian clown walks into a bar and tries to figure out her life.
In Arnett’s new novel, Cherry Hendricks, a 28-year-old part-time aquarium-store worker, wants nothing more than to be a full-time clown. Though her persona Bunko, a rodeo clown terrified of horses, is successful on the Orlando birthday-party circuit, she’s broke because “going rates for clowns are at basement lows.” In addition to her money issues, Cherry is struggling with complicated family dynamics and an increasingly messy love life (including a penchant for “sleeping with people’s moms”). Five years ago, Cherry’s outgoing, hilarious, and successful brother, Dwight, died unexpectedly. In his absence, the already strained relationship between Cherry and her mother, Nancy, who is also a lesbian, is made even worse. Cherry’s life begins to change after a terrible first date with Margot—better known as Margot the Magnificent—who is nearly twice her age. One of Orlando’s finest magicians, Margot finds herself at a strange career crossroads in the wake of her divorce from Portia, her wife and magician’s assistant. Both Cherry and Margot see potential in each other—and begin a relationship that blurs the lines between personal and professional. As they become more closely enmeshed physically and artistically, Cherry must decide what kind of art she wants to make—and what she wants to be remembered for. During an eccentric sex scene near the beginning of the novel, Cherry says that “clowning is an excuse to make everyday life wildly, luxuriously absurd.” Though the novel dips into the absurd, Arnett grounds the characters and relationships beautifully through her signature style of humor and heart. Her writing is particularly strong when exploring the ways we show up for ourselves and our communities—as well as the sacrifices we should and shouldn’t make for our art.
A funny and tender novel about life’s best and worst punchlines.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593719770
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 tart meditation on narrative and integrity.
A writer’s meeting with his mentor goes complicatedly awry.
Lerner’s slim fourth novel opens with an unnamed narrator arriving in Providence, Rhode Island, on a magazine assignment to interview Thomas, a professor who’s “among the world’s most renowned thinkers about art and technology.” Just before leaving his hotel, though, he accidentally knocks his phone in a sink, bricking it. His sole means of recording the interview gone, he triages, suggesting that he and Thomas conduct a pre-interview that evening and do a full-dress conversation the next day, after he can get the device fixed. The setup seems thin, but, this being a Lerner novel, rich ethical and philosophical questions fly off it: He’s concerned with the ways that an interview poisons authentic conversation, with our over-reliance on technology, and the moral dilemmas of talking to an unreliable source. (Thomas, 90, seems distracted and sometimes dotty.) Lerner’s true subject isn’t an interview so much as it is misapprehension and miscommunication; after the meeting with Thomas in the first section, the second and third parts are concerned with characters’ failures to understand something about each other, be it a romantic partner’s wishes or a child’s eating disorder. That last challenge makes for some of the most vivid, offbeat, and affecting writing Lerner has delivered—a surprise, given his fiction is typically marked by DeLillo-esque sangfroid. Another surprise is the relative embrace of a conventional story arc, as the narrator faces a reckoning about living in a “deepfake” world. This is slighter fare for Lerner but surprisingly potent given its length, interested in the ways that we manufacture our identities and how technology speeds the process along.
A tart meditation on narrative and integrity.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780374618599
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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