Whimsy and fantasy meet the way things really turn out in stories from a strong new voice.
Girls and women caught between myth and the modern world.
Selected by Ann Hood as the winner of the Red Hen Fiction Award, Ehrlich’s debut collection contains 15 stories, some as short as a paragraph. Protagonists range from girls dealing with absent mothers, first kisses, and female friendships to grown women, mothers and would-be mothers themselves. Many feature animals (swan, deer, bear, raccoon, and more) or mythic creatures (the Marsh King, the Undertoad), and most have at least one foot in a liminal space between fantasy and reality, between what we dream of and what we’ll ultimately accept. A story called “Six Roses” handles this tension with a healthy dose of humor. “June’s holding out for a man like Heathcliff or Mr. Darcy, whose scorn masks a deep pain only she can heal. She wants a kiss that will stop the earth from spinning, with a man who would die for her. If they were stranded in the ocean with only one plank of driftwood between them, he would insist she take it, and comfort her as he froze to death. No eighth-grader can compete with that. Nathan Bagley never stood a chance.” In fact, it turns out he does, because reality has a way of winning. In “The Tenant,” a woman who is living happily with a hungry bear—she serves him dinner by candlelight—is heartbroken when he moves out. While “Foresight” imagines a substance that lets you see all your possible futures, it seems to concur with “Stone Fruit” about the disappointment at the end of the road: “Alice had wanted to sleep beneath the stars nestled in a gypsy’s arms. She’d wanted to travel the world and write a novel rivaling War and Peace. Now, she wants a house to grow old in.” The drifty way the stories unfold—a lack of narrative urgency—may keep some readers from digging in.
Whimsy and fantasy meet the way things really turn out in stories from a strong new voice.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-59709-884-7
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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