Lee’s self-aware, relentlessly honest narrator feels absolutely real, and her story cuts deep.
A long-simmering tragedy unfolds in the Kim family of California, from the 1980s to the early 2000s.
The title of Lee’s heartrending debut novel employs a Korean word that isn’t defined in the text. Most sources describe “han” as a collective feeling of sorrow, resentment, regret, and internalized anger stemming from the historical experience of suffering; the story of the Kims expresses this complex emotion in a number of ways. The novel opens in December 2001, when Jane Kim’s mother shows up unexpectedly at her apartment in San Francisco, announcing she’s planning to move into town from Jane’s childhood home in Napa. Jane is not happy to see her, explaining, “Our relationship had soured to the point where I’d become almost mute around her, a habit formed out of instinct and anger.” The elder Kims, who have recently split up after decades of incompatibility, arrived along with the wave of Koreans who came to the U.S. after the Immigration Act of 1965 removed restrictions on Asian arrivals; those optimistic times are now far in the past. Jane is in her last semester of law school, but plans to leave the state and apply for the bar somewhere else, seemingly to escape her parents. Later chapters revisit the childhood Jane shared with her brother, Kevin, both having had notable junior tennis careers, and track the unfolding of a serious crime Kevin committed in 2002, when he was a San Jose cop. Lee captures the culture of the Korean diaspora both with small details—a jar of kimchi buried in the yard for more than 10 years, dug up only when the house is sold—and with broader brush strokes. “We have a sense of loyalty, of obligation, as if we came into the world with it programmed in our DNA,” Jane observes. “Responsibility reaches beyond the filial, beyond members of our own families, encompassing an entire network of people with whom we share shame and grief and pride and a way of seeing something funny in the bleakest situations.” But it is at that last point that the author parts ways with the community. Lee’s refusal to find comedy in the Kims’ personalities and predicament is rare, and extremely effective.
Lee’s self-aware, relentlessly honest narrator feels absolutely real, and her story cuts deep.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9781643757254
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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 delightfully nostalgic novel about how the things we loved in the past have the power to shape our future.
A boy band cruise is the site of one woman’s post-divorce healing.
Annie never meant to end up alone on a Boy Talk cruise, but that’s exactly what happens when her sister breaks a leg and has to bow out of their vacation. Now Annie is sharing a cabin with a stranger, stuck on the cruise ship American Fantasy with the 1990s band—and thousands of their biggest fans, known as Talkers. Annie doesn’t consider herself a Talker, even if she was a fan back in the day. But reeling from a recent divorce and dealing with complex feelings about turning 50, Annie throws herself into the distraction of the trip. What she doesn’t expect is to truly connect with the music, the band, the other fans, and herself. As Annie observes, “This was why people turned to religion or watched the Super Bowl at a sports bar instead of alone in their living room. It felt good to be a part of something where your passion was celebrated instead of mocked.” All the Talkers dream of having a special bond with “the guys,” but when Annie actually does meet Keith, a Boy Talk member who’s clearly going through a hard time, she wonders if their connection is real or if she’s just as delusional as the other (mostly) women on the ship. Straub depicts a wonderfully immersive world aboard the American Fantasy, one where each woman assigns herself a favorite guy and everyone is bedecked in Boy Talk merch. For five days, the Talkers live in a fantasy world where the only thing that matters is their connection with a band that meant everything to them so many years ago. As Annie puts it, “Inside her head, which is where she heard the music, it had touched some lever so deep that it couldn’t be reversed…the music was a direct vein to her own childhood, the least complicated part of her life.”
A delightfully nostalgic novel about how the things we loved in the past have the power to shape our future.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798217046850
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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