A heartfelt story with well-developed if somewhat passive central characters.
In Buchwald’s novel, Manhattan restaurant owners contend with spirits of the past while fighting for their future.
Partners Josie and Derek are no strangers to the many manifestations of grief: Derek suffered a childhood weighed down by the death of the older brother he never got to meet, while Josie inherited from her grandmother the gift of spirit communication. Both are now struggling to keep their New Orleans-inspired restaurant, Miss Sylvie’s, afloat in the competitive Manhattan scene. Derek struggles with Josie’s insistence that a table in their restaurant be set aside for spirits he doesn’t even believe in; Josie bumps against Derek’s pessimism for their prospects of keeping Miss Sylvie’s afloat. At the encouragement of a therapist, they decide to hire a manager, and soon land on Stephanie. Derek is wary about her competence and character (“I’m not sure. Something felt off”), but Stephanie is enthusiastic and promises to bring the business to life with weekly happy hours and live music. This enthusiasm is misplaced, and Stephanie soon proves to be as much of a threat as rising rent prices. In the midst of all this, Josie meets with her absent father and is forced to accept that he will always prioritize Josie’s stepmother over her. When spirits convey the message that Derek’s mother is dying, the pair must reckon with their histories. Buchwald’s story is one of making peace with the past, embracing the complexities of grief, and fighting to move forward. It is refreshing to find a narrative featuring ghosts that doesn’t give into the tropes of horror, and that works to fully characterize each and every spirit who appears. There are points where the tone of the writing fails to match the more intense stakes of the story, and more could be done to make the protagonists active agents—the novel’s strengths are its most sentimental moments and the characters readers will come to root for.
A heartfelt story with well-developed if somewhat passive central characters.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798892990776
Page Count: 278
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
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 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
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