Perceptive and endearing, this novel signals the arrival of a talented new voice in fiction.
An aspiring writer returns to his home state of Kentucky and meets a woman who will change his perspective—and his trajectory.
“I’ve always had the same predicament. When I’m home, in Kentucky, all I want is to leave. When I’m away, I’m homesick for a place that never was,” Owen, the narrator of Cole’s charming debut novel, tells us in the book’s opening lines. This is also what Owen drunkenly tells Alma the night he meets her at a grad-student party in the foothills outside Louisville, where he works as a groundskeeper, tending to trees on the campus of a small private college, and Alma is a visiting writer. Well-read yet rudderless, Owen, too, has literary aspirations, taking copious notes on his life to use in his work; his humble job at the college allows him to take a writing class for free. Having returned to his home state following a stint working dead-end jobs and partying in Colorado and disinclined to move in with either of his divorced parents, whose kindness is eclipsed, in Owen’s mind, by their religious fundamentalism and political conservatism, Owen is living rent-free in his genial grandfather’s basement, watching movies with the old man and butting heads with his unemployed uncle, Cort, who, at 52, has failed to launch. Owen seems in danger of getting equally stuck. Enter Alma, whose background couldn’t be more different from Owen’s rural, working-class upbringing. Alma was raised in a liberal, loving, upper-middle-class home in an affluent Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C.; attended Princeton; and, at age 26, has found acclaim as a fiction writer. Yet her childhood was not without its challenges: A Bosnian Muslim, she was born in Sarajevo and came to America with her family to escape the war. Owen and Alma gradually fall in love, and their culture-bridging connection alters Owen, ultimately allowing him to learn and grow. But Cole’s novel is more than a love story or a coming-of-age tale. Written with superb attention to detail and subtle emotional complexities, the book also offers a lovingly nuanced look at America—its longtime residents and recent immigrants; its ramshackle rural beauty, urban revival, and suburban safety; and its generous opportunities for reinvention. In the end, it is a love letter to home.
Perceptive and endearing, this novel signals the arrival of a talented new voice in fiction.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-32050-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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