An elliptical and unsettling entry into the canon of contemporary dystopias.
A group of patients at an isolated rehabilitation center work to recover language and memory after having had them wiped out by a mysterious virus.
At the beginning of Greene’s slim novel, the nameless protagonist has passed through a required period of quarantine and is taking medications to counteract the effects of a virus that neurologically ravages its hosts. The narrator—telling events retrospectively from a future readers are eager to see arrive—is a resident of what is called only “the Center” and doesn’t remember anything about the past. The goal is that the residents will eventually, through a regime of instruction and socialization, “graduate” and re-acclimate to an outside world they are assured exists. Given names from “cartridges” they watch of old sitcoms (there are numerous patients called “Joey” and “Chandler”), the residents take courses like “Grammar,” “Politeness,” “The History of the Twenty-first Century: A Story of Progress,” and “Art.” But how can they relearn humanity and society without the benefit of a narrative on which to draw? It is this notion around which Greene forms the book’s core. “It had been explained to us in Orientation: the world was a hand and language was a glove,” notes the protagonist. But what happens when the glove does not fit—and when the world has shrunk to the size of a fenced-in facility? Greene’s novel belongs to a lyrical tradition in the vein of Never Let Me Go, but eschews typical worldbuilding or backstory. These gaps create an eerie effect, but they allow for characters who themselves are blank slates of identity and meaning, while focusing less on plot than on moments of symbolic power that show how language shapes us, our relationships, and our sense of the world.
An elliptical and unsettling entry into the canon of contemporary dystopias.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250399342
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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