A fun, frenetic, and overly ambitious yarn about finding purpose in a sea of tangled intentions.
In Franco’s novel, a South Asian man seeks personal rejuvenation as a spiritual traveler.
It’s 2014, and despite his hilariously smug, egocentric attitude, Richard Parker remains a struggling journalist at New Delhi’s Indian Republic newspaper. Not content with just writing articles, the busy bachelor also moonlights as the entrepreneurial CEO of Cow 'n' Roots, a business that outsources the sale of sun-dried organic cow waste products at a 300 percent profit margin. A botched media spectacle meant to expose a local unscrupulous kingpin results in his swift and unceremonious termination. Jobless, with a destroyed career, Parker temporarily retreats to his native village seeking to change his life’s path through enlightenment and take a “passage into sainthood” through a pilgrimage with seven others. This spiritual cleansing journey is just one in a series of false starts toward reenergizing his broken spirit. Heavily immersed in Hindu spiritualism, tradition, culture, and doctrine, Parker’s sojourns guide the narrative through several holy stops as “RP Saamy” (Parker’s spiritual pseudonym) and his fellow seekers are dazzled by the temples of gods and goddesses. Parker soon gives up on the pilgrimage, however, and falls for a lovely girl named Chandini, admitting that “my enthusiasm tanks, but my hormones don’t.” These misadventures and setbacks form the bulk of Franco’s rollicking, densely populated narrative. Bonds are quickly formed and broken as Parker searches for love, belonging, and meaning throughout dizzying months spent in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. The novel’s length becomes an issue as Parker’s wearying mishaps, spiritual tribulations, Tinder dates, and the onslaught of peripheral characters and prophesizing shamans eventually run out of steam. Still, he’s an engrossing, if self-absorbed, personality to observe—Franco excels at keen characterization and effervescent dialogue. The globetrotting, vibrant, culturally rich adventures of Richard Parker are hard to resist.
A fun, frenetic, and overly ambitious yarn about finding purpose in a sea of tangled intentions.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 979-8223473961
Page Count: 472
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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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