As singular as it is atmospheric.
A collection of quietly wrenching stories that plumb the minds of women stuck at life’s fragile crossroads.
In her third short story collection, Bergman masterfully probes the lives of strange, stubborn women and girls, from dissatisfied wives to suspicious, watchful children. Often finding themselves in the wake of tragedy or enormous life change—the unceremonious end of a marriage; a parent’s death; the sudden, unwanted inheritance of a family estate—these characters work to navigate the existential anxieties of lives imbued by silent, amorphous sorrow. In "Workhorse," a woman newly separated from her husband (“We’d planned to divorce, but neither of us liked paperwork”) contends with the whims of her recently widowed retired-businessman father; when a restlessness leads him to move to his native Italy and adopt a wounded mule, both parent and child must acknowledge the losses they’ve endured—namely, of someone to care for. The theme of parental mortality continues in "The Heirloom," which finds 29-year-old Regan the unenthusiastic inheritor of her mother’s sustainability ranch; after she repurposes it into a site for city men to drive bulldozers and crush cars, she battles her own “pent-up rage to split a metal machine wide open,” reeling from her mother’s death and the unpredictability of loss. In "Wife Days," the semi-unhappily married Farrah swims endless laps, courts male attention, and engages in detached, animalistic sex with her husband, all while warding against the “craziness” that came, as her mother warned, “when the currency of beauty faded.” The novella-length "Indigo Run"—set at Stillwood, a pain-riddled Southern estate that’s housed generations of the old Glass family—probes the burdens its women carry from one generation to the next: loss, motherhood, ancestral burdens. Bergman’s stories are so atmospherically and emotionally rich that they serve as portals into distinct interior worlds, often concluding on a quiet, destabilizing note that calls into question the narrative’s apparent straightforwardness. As a whole (and though "Indigo Run" is unevenly paced), this collection is distinct and vivid, each story burrowing inside the reader’s brain to leave an indelible mark.
As singular as it is atmospheric.Pub Date: March 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1310-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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 welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
