Sharply observed, beautifully rendered, and heartbreaking.
A group of characters in Los Angeles face climate crisis and existential angst in 14 interconnected short stories.
Two families stand at the center of Millet’s lovely, keening tales: Buzz, Amy, and their children Liza and Nick; and single mother Helen with daughters Mia and Shelley. They are well-educated, middle-class, liberal Americans, appalled by the state of their country and, in the case of the parents, bemused by their children. The younger generation “seemed to be void of ideology. Beyond naming and shaming each other for perceived identity bias,” comments Trudy, another character who turns up in several stories. This isn’t entirely true of Liza, who impulsively married a “DACA kid,” Luis, while still in high school, or Nick, a Stanford grad enraged by Americans’ complacency in the face of the “five-alarm emergency” of climate catastrophe and impending global extinction. “What we need,” he tells his therapist, “is a worldwide revolution. Yesterday.” Nonetheless, he’s stocking shelves in a big-box store and bartending in a gay bar, and his attitude of “what can I do?” is shared by most of Millet’s wonderfully human, believably flawed characters. A few creeps turn up—there’s one in “Pastoralist,” about a man who preys on vulnerable women, and another in “Cultist,” where Shelley’s smug boyfriend, Jake, spouts “pieces of pat received wisdom from business school” to her amused mother and the horrified Nick, who has become Mia’s boyfriend over the course of the stories. But generally, the author is gentle with confused, well-meaning people immobilized by the scope of the apocalypse they see looming. As she did in such novels as Dinosaurs (2022) and A Children’s Bible (2020), Millet blends a blunt assessment of our refusal to deal with the ecological catastrophes we have created and a tender portrait of human beings with all their foibles.
Sharply observed, beautifully rendered, and heartbreaking.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9781324074410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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