A book of consistently arresting and engaging stories about family life.
Gerber collects stories from across five decades in this volume of short fiction.
The author has had a prolific career stretching back to the 1960s. In addition to her 19 novels for children and adults, she has published dozens of short stories (including 42 in Redbook alone). This volume collects some of the best, including the O. Henry Award–winning “I Don’t Believe This,” in which a woman helps her sister navigate her separation from an abusive and suicidal husband. Family is a frequent topic across these tales. In one story, a young woman who’s never been to a funeral travels to New York to attend her uncle’s memorial service, where she’s exposed not only to death for the first time, but also to the long-simmering resentments of her father’s family. “We pile back in the cars, in the same distribution as before, and we drive away,” the woman narrates after the event. “There. I have seen a funeral—I have seen it all, and what do I know? I have understood nothing.” In another, more humorous look at family dynamics, a woman recounts the period of her childhood when her father attempted to become an inventor. (One of his ideas: fried chicken–skin sandwiches to be sold at Coney Island.) Another recurring theme across these 25 stories is the way in which the past inevitably intrudes on the present, even after many years. A young mother gets a call one day out of the blue from a man she went to college with but hasn’t heard from since: “I had thought of Ricky often in the kind of reveries in which we all engage when we count the lives that never were meant to be for us,” she admits. A number of the stories—including “Anna in Chains,” “Anna Passes On,” and “Anna’s Archive”—follow a character named Anna Mazer, inspired by Gerber’s own mother, who frequently finds herself at odds with the world around her.
In story after story, the author demonstrates a deep sensitivity to the ways in which people miscomprehend each other, even when one party is attempting to be honest. “It makes me feel desperate, as if I have no control over my life,” says Anna in one story, speaking to a pair of younger, bored neighbors who don’t care that their dog barks all day and night, eroding Anna’s sanity. In “I Don’t Believe This,” the abusive brother-in-law, fresh off an unsuccessful attempt at overdosing, arrives at the narrator’s house to ask, “[C]an’t you treat me like regular old me; can’t you ask me to come in and have dinner with you? I’m not a monster. Can’t anyone, anyone, be nice to me?” In the absence of sensational, dramatic events, such vulnerability, which is so rarely understood or reciprocated, forms the nucleus around which many of these ripped-from-life stories circle. Whether they’re longtime fans or are discovering Gerber for the first time, readers will take much from this collection, which feels like not only the culmination of a long career but of a long life.
A book of consistently arresting and engaging stories about family life.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781963846539
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Sagging Meniscus Press
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
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 delightfully nostalgic novel about how the things we loved in the past have the power to shape our future.
A boy band cruise is the site of one woman’s post-divorce healing.
Annie never meant to end up alone on a Boy Talk cruise, but that’s exactly what happens when her sister breaks a leg and has to bow out of their vacation. Now Annie is sharing a cabin with a stranger, stuck on the cruise ship American Fantasy with the 1990s band—and thousands of their biggest fans, known as Talkers. Annie doesn’t consider herself a Talker, even if she was a fan back in the day. But reeling from a recent divorce and dealing with complex feelings about turning 50, Annie throws herself into the distraction of the trip. What she doesn’t expect is to truly connect with the music, the band, the other fans, and herself. As Annie observes, “This was why people turned to religion or watched the Super Bowl at a sports bar instead of alone in their living room. It felt good to be a part of something where your passion was celebrated instead of mocked.” All the Talkers dream of having a special bond with “the guys,” but when Annie actually does meet Keith, a Boy Talk member who’s clearly going through a hard time, she wonders if their connection is real or if she’s just as delusional as the other (mostly) women on the ship. Straub depicts a wonderfully immersive world aboard the American Fantasy, one where each woman assigns herself a favorite guy and everyone is bedecked in Boy Talk merch. For five days, the Talkers live in a fantasy world where the only thing that matters is their connection with a band that meant everything to them so many years ago. As Annie puts it, “Inside her head, which is where she heard the music, it had touched some lever so deep that it couldn’t be reversed…the music was a direct vein to her own childhood, the least complicated part of her life.”
A delightfully nostalgic novel about how the things we loved in the past have the power to shape our future.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798217046850
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
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