A vivid, visceral portrait of family farm life.
A captivating poetry collection inspired by the author’s family farm and orchard in Rhode Island.
Though Sasso pursued writing and publishing as an adult, the natural surroundings of his youth clearly made their marks on him. These poems take readers back to Avellino, Italy, from which the author’s great-grandfather set sail for the United States. The grandfather planted apple trees as “faith fruit,” because they don’t bear apples for eight to nine years. Over the course of 60-plus poems, Sasso explores all the challenges of farm life, from tractor troubles to a 68-day drought and underground fires. The themes of faith and death recur as the family struggles to survive working the land. Eventually, the farmers’ bodies give out, and their lifestyle is abandoned. A vacant home, an empty shed, a rusty tractor, and an overgrown orchard are all that remain. Sasso deeply grounds his work in the land he knows so well. From the “dark, wet / fertile” earth and “the knife of wind” to the “soot-stained snow” and the sunset like “a drawstring closing a black satin bag,” the poet evokes rural Rhode Island. He also pays as much attention to the people who populate the farm, orchard, and surrounding community. You can practically smell the “beer swollen, sweat-sour men” working the field with scythes and see a father eating “watery egg, / weak tea, gray toast” in a dark kitchen at 2 a.m. Some of the poems feel superfluous and barely qualify as poetry, such as “Farm Inventory,” which is a list of tools used by the grandfather farmer. Sasso also sticks to free verse throughout the entire book, which can wear on the reader; greater variety of form would have made this a more dynamic read.
A vivid, visceral portrait of family farm life. (dedication, acknowledgments, attributions)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-66-898029-1
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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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