A deeply moving, deliciously weighty work of fiction.
In Moor’s novel, a woman navigates abuse, crime, and the trauma that follows both.
Within Charmay are three people: The first and primary persona, “Charmay,” is an aspiring singer-songwriter confronting an abusive past and enduring an increasingly violent marriage. “Cindy,” her alter ego, is an exotic dancer with an iron will to survive. She is enthusiastic and educated—everything Charmay wants to be. “Skinless” is Charmay’s internal antagonist. Skinless forces Charmay’s traumatic past as a survivor of sexual abuse and homelessness to the fore while echoing every brutal insecurity Charmay has ever had about herself and every insult her mother ever hurled at her. It is Charmay’s intrusive tormentor, sabotaging opportunities to further her career and creating a barrier between who Charmay is and who she had to become to survive. As Charmay navigates the grittier parts of New York City in 1999, she must claw her way through exploitative relationships with men and an indifferent entertainment industry. When Rex Revan, a patron of the club where Charmay dances, offers “Cindy” a transactional relationship with the father figure she never had, Charmay’s cool facade begins to falter. Charmay’s story is not one of redemption, but of survival and resilience. Moor’s poetic, stream-of-consciousness prose drops readers directly into the mind of a trauma survivor, and the experience can be as unmooring as Charmay’s life experiences. (It “felt to me like I’d been born with some cursed mongo antennae inside; soaks up all the nasty, pus-filled wounds of the world. I often had to hunker down, submerge, to re-up—sometimes get intuitions on how to go back out, handle people.”) Equally profound is the author’s careful unpacking of a common, problematic archetype in the noir genre. On the surface, Charmay might come across as a typical femme fatale, an object of desire and danger, but her gifts for introspection and observation make her the perfect lynchpin for the author’s subversion. She’s not the object of an external gaze—she’s a character with agency and authority. Some readers may have difficulty following Charmay’s fractured perspective, but those who surrender to the flow will be rewarded.
A deeply moving, deliciously weighty work of fiction.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2025
ISBN: 9798993121222
Page Count: 382
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2026
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
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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