War is hell, but Young shows us that what happens afterward can be worse.
“Really, though, when you get down to it, most everything is a war story, right?”
Dean Pusey is having a tough time adjusting to life back in Indiana after having served four years as a Marine in Iraq. He’s living with his (adoptive) mother and stepfather, working at UPS, and hanging out with his childhood best friend. None of it, however, is going well, and Dean is still at war—if only with himself and PTSD. Floundering on his way to becoming “someone” rather than “anyone,” Dean struggles to discern whether he is the problem in all his relationships, including the one he never had with his birth mother. Unfortunately, the discernment process involves a lot of alcohol, some drugs, bar fights, a rifle, and pretend battle exercises. Flashbacks to brutal episodes Dean witnessed and participated in during his tours of duty come fast and furious, but Dean is not ready, willing, or able to reveal what he’s still carrying around in his head. Debut novelist Young deftly maneuvers between Dean’s postdischarge life and the corrosive and brutalizing events of his military service and clearly conveys the jarring realities of transitioning from wartime to lifetime. As Dean narrates the course of what he promises will be a love story—while opining that war stories underpin almost every experience—humor and perceptive insights mark the storytelling; people he meets want to hear about his war experiences, but what they really want to do is to tell him about their own, or secondhand, war stories. Young, the author of Eat the Apple (2018), a memoir detailing his own service with the Marines in Iraq, delivers a cleareyed, nonsentimental chronicle of the corrosive and far-reaching effects of war and its inevitable aftermath.
War is hell, but Young shows us that what happens afterward can be worse.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781639732791
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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