An exciting collection bristling with intelligence, political awareness, and psychological complexity.
A collection of stories set in Washington, D.C., full of scandal and insider details.
"Official DC is mindful of insignificant beginnings, of small decisions that escalate into epic downfalls. Five men break into an office one June night in 1972. A pretty girl wears a blue dress from the Gap." And in Pietrzyk's razor-sharp version of the city, the insignificant beginning is a 15-year-old girl going to meet her father at the bar in the Kennedy Center. Her father turns out to be the Speaker of the House, and their meet-up ends with both of them on the way to the hospital following an attack. Eight of the remaining stories circle around this incident and these characters. At an art opening in Durham, North Carolina, the speaker's estranged adult daughter by a previous marriage hears of the attack and jumps in the car to drive up to Washington with her much younger boyfriend. The speaker's top staffer, who has been cleaning up his messes for decades, learns of the stabbing and rushes to the hospital to manage the potential collision of present and former wives and numerous half siblings. Interspersed with the speaker stories are five bonus tracks with different characters, several dealing directly with issues of White privilege. "People Love a View," a particularly interesting one, places a couple on their first date at the scene of a traffic stop with a cop who's "a Hollywood stereotype" and an older Black man with a big dog in the car. "Wait. Shouldn't I film this?" asks the woman, and sure enough, a terrible series of events, though not the ones we expect, unfolds. "Green in Judgment," set entirely in a grocery checkout line, torques its drama with metafictional techniques, each section given a label such as "Every story needs a villain, possibly more than one if the story is eighteen pages or longer," "Every story needs one bad decision," and "Every story needs one coincidence. (Only one)."
An exciting collection bristling with intelligence, political awareness, and psychological complexity.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951213-41-1
Page Count: 257
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 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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