A slender, elusive story that enfolds other stories, surpassingly strange.
A postmodern romp by Catalan writer Besora.
Most characters in Besora’s latest, rendered in staccato bursts of language and emoji-like symbols, introduce themselves by their astrological signs, as with the first speaker, 17-year-old Amanda Jane Holofernes: “my zodiac sign is scorpio aka brave but sometimes violent my favorite color is red and i like romance novels because that’s as close as i’ll get to real love but at the same time it’s all really dark.” The biblical name Holofernes might alert the reader that something violent this way comes, with Amanda morphing into Mandyjane Deathlove to exact vengeance for her father’s sexual abuse. Another character has an untoward attraction to a hamster with intellectual superpowers, evidenced by its writing “a rigorous study on the false truths of humankind designed to emancipate all rodents and animals in general from human servitude.” Papa Holofernes is full of excuses for his bad behavior, while his 48-year-old Taurus wife is a font of rationalizations; not much help when an Exterminating Angel—shades of Buñuel—is afoot. Besora’s slip of a story is replete with a talking dog that knows Catalan better than do teenage humans and old-school linguistic chauvinists bent on keeping Catalan, and presumably Catalonia, pure (“if we neocatalans stop speaking neocatalan to jabber on in that new spanglish how will our beloved language survive huh?”). The grand twist comes when it’s not the rapist father but the author himself who comes under interrogation: Says Amanda accusingly, “You...forced me to be sexually assaulted by my own father, and to become a hysterical and merciless killer, repeating all the clichés of ‘abused-woman-seeks-revenge.’” That meta-referential scenario doesn’t add much to a talky story in which not much happens, but readers with a bent for Cortázar and Coover might enjoy the proceedings.
A slender, elusive story that enfolds other stories, surpassingly strange.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781960385338
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Open Letter
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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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