An elegant blend of mystery and sociology by one of Cuba’s most accomplished writers.
A socially revealing procedural by noted novelist Padura, the laureate of Havana.
To say that Padura’s detective hero, Mario Conde, is world-weary is to risk understatement. He’s almost 60, tired, fully aware that the clock is ticking: “Among his three friends, he was the one sure to lift his glass the most times, fully aware that he sought the beneficial state of unconsciousness,” writes Padura. “And whenever the recurring subject of frustrations, losses, and abandonments came up, he was the one who understood it as a matter of principles.” Working more on his side hustle than on sleuthing, Conde haunts secondhand bookshops looking for treasures to sell. Meanwhile, Bobby Roque, an old high school friend, has been plying a better trade selling rare works of art—sometimes forgeries—to the American market. Bobby’s boyfriend, however, has stepped on that lucrative business by pilfering his goodies, including a rare Black Madonna, supposedly the Virgin of Regla. Problem is, the statue doesn’t quite match the canonical requirements of the icon, giving Padura a chance to explore the religious symbolism of Spanish Catholicism as it intersects with Santería, the African tradition in which Bobby has become an adept, shedding his former doctrinaire Marxism and his pretended straightness, put on “so that everyone in our macho-socialist homeland would believe that I was what I should have been and wouldn’t take everything away from me.” The story of the theft is a fairly straightforward matter, with the usual red herrings. What is of more interest to readers looking between the lines is Padura’s unforgiving portrait of the Cuba of 2014, a couple of years before Fidel Castro’s death, in which there are definite haves and have-nots, the latter of whom live in shantytowns and lack “running water, sewers, electricity, or the ration books that guaranteed Cuban citizens minimum subsistence at subsidized prices.” In such appalling conditions, the loss of a religious statue should seem a small thing—though, of course, it’s not.
An elegant blend of mystery and sociology by one of Cuba’s most accomplished writers.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-27795-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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
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