Fast-paced and often hilarious fiction that may appeal most to members of the tech startup set.
A slacker tries to escape the effects of a shortsighted business deal in Fellows’ debut novel.
Giles Goodenough is an American-born, Oxford-educated, trust-funded 20-something who has so far been able to coast through life. He admits, in the narration, to “bumbling around in London for almost all of the previous decade.” The current decade finds him in New York City, faking his way through each day as a research analyst on Wall Street—a position that his wealthy father arranged for him after realizing that his son was wasting a very expensive college degree. Giles is married to Cherry, a selfie-obsessed, ex–exotic dancer–turned–Instagram entrepreneur and future mother of his child. Giles’ job surveying the stock activity of tech startups, including one called Zyxview, has drawn the attention of the ruthless billionaire founder Peter O. Silver, “the Big Swinging Dick of the moment,” who owns the cheekily named hedge fund POS Capital. Silver woos Giles away from his job with an intriguing offer: He wants Giles to go undercover, fly to San Francisco, and get close to Zyxview’s founder, Egon Crump, who’s notable for his unusual sartorial choices, including a fur vest, and who reveals himself to be attracted to the straight Giles. Cherry also becomes embroiled in the industrial-espionage melodrama and eventually becomes another of Peter’s pawns. Giles’ assignment is to extract details about Zyxview’s financial holdings and its future economic stability, which he does, as Egon is surprisingly forthcoming. However, this information comes at a cost that gradually reveals itself as the highly readable story progresses.
In this gloriously sardonic book, both of the tech giants come across as caricatures, but Fellows describes them with a great amount of care. He seamlessly incorporates such larger-than-life personalities into a narrative that addresses very serious themes, including unbridled corporate corruption, vanity, hypocrisy, “the wheels of capitalism,” and how rampant materialism in the modern age keeps humanity from moving forward in a meaningful way. Giles finds himself pivoting between trying to get the approval of his employer and keeping his sanity amid so much greed and criminality. Along the way, Fellows relentlessly satirizes tech companies and their extravagance, and his novel’s timeliness and relevance are sure to be among the book’s biggest selling points. He expertly employs his own experience as a former hedge fund manager to make the settings feel real even as his characters become embroiled in ever larger and more serious calamities. After a stampede during a product unveiling, for example, Giles notes, “Ten people were crushed to death. And the entire event dominated media coverage for days. It was pure Americana. Even Donald Trump was jealous, apparently.” The descriptions and dialogue are consistently pithy and snarky throughout the novel, and Giles’ narration is informative about tech-company matters; the author gives him just the right amount of self-deprecation to make him a charming storyteller. Overall, this novel will be a riotous ride for readers.
Fast-paced and often hilarious fiction that may appeal most to members of the tech startup set.Pub Date: April 24, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 231
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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