An often engaging story about found families in the wake of tragedy.
In Mbinguni’s novel, a young girl encounters caring women while on the run with her murderous father.
In Maplewood, Georgia, Hannah Maynard, known to everyone as “Mouse,” is a happy 7-year-old girl. She adores her parents and spends hours in the garden, laying “still on my blanket until my bones hurt, hoping I wouldn’t scare any of the creatures away.” But her father, Ray, is struggling. There’s unrest at his job after a big fire at the mill where he works, and his own mother has just died of cancer. As Hannah puts it, “there was no space to get through his grief.” Hoping to quell his pain, Hannah’s mother plans to throw him a surprise 30th birthday party. But when he doesn’t show up, family friend Johnny B goes looking for him, finally returning with him hopelessly drunk. The drunken Ray misconstrues a harmless embrace between Johnny B and Hannah’s mother, and he turns violent after Johnny B departs. Later that evening, Hannah watches her dad shoot her mom dead. He then flees the scene and takes his daughter with him. The pair stay in the boardinghouse of a kind woman named Ms. Janie and later live for years in a brothel run by the generous, loving Ms. Sookie. Indeed, wherever they go, Hannah is surrounded by kind, powerful, and strong women. The novel, set primarily in the 1950s and ’60s, tells a skillful story about the power of female camaraderie in spite of the horrific violence against a woman near the start of the narrative. Although Hannah has lost her biological mother, she has a coterie of women looking out for her who quickly become like family—a theme that the author deftly evokes throughout the book. Later, when Ray has a child with another woman, Hannah is not upset; rather, she says that “I was in love with him from the moment I held him.” Her generosity of spirit is quietly moving and beautifully rendered through fine dialogue and descriptions.
An often engaging story about found families in the wake of tragedy.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73572-190-3
Page Count: 386
Publisher: New Reads Publications
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 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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