A delightful, twisty story about storytelling.
A man with an unusual past seeks to solve an offbeat mystery in Ingwalson’s comic novel.
Boblives in Aspenroot,a Rocky Mountain city that’s now the largest urban area in the world, a destination for dreamers and schemers of all sorts. Bob is afraid that his fellow Aspenroot residents don’t like him—including his neighbors, strangers on the bus, and his co-workers at Moo Cow Farms Milk Delivery, where he works as a delivery driver. He decides to throw a party to get to know the people in his neighborhood, and at that get-together, he hears an incredible story from a man who survived the city’s infamous holiday office-party massacre: “Slaughterhouse Aspenroot,” narrates the survivor, a born storyteller. “The Great American Abattoir. Let the devil take the hindmost and a fire eat the rest. One door in, no way out. Forty-six of the forty-eight employees of SuperMeme/Aspenroot and a half-dozen caterers (and the like) punched bloody.” However, a few elements of the tale don’t sit right with Bob, who knows a thing or two about lies, guns, and crime. It starts him off on a quest to uncover a mysterious figure who maybe only exists in his mind but who’s at the heart of the American West: Chatterhat. Ingwalson’s prose is energetic but understated, distracting the reader with low-key digressions and asides only to surprise them with surreal imagery, as when Bob listens to a neighbor’s gossip about people Bob doesn’t know: “ ‘The other day, the Suppervilles, you know them right?’ I make a noncommittal shrug, like who doesn’t know the Suppervilles, right? ‘Yeah, right, there was that whole wife-swapping party rumor? Them. But so they lost their cat the other day.’ ” The novel’s mix of the absurd and the mundane will remind readers of the work of Sam Lipsyte and George Saunders, but Ingwalson manages to strike a hypnotic rhythm of his own. It’s a weird and rambling tale—the kind you hear at a party and don’t fully believe but might find yourself thinking about months and years later.
A delightful, twisty story about storytelling.Pub Date: May 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-57-887857-7
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2021
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
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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