A humorous but disappointingly stunted tale about a would-be poet’s adventures.
Chaos ensues after a man at a crossroads reaches out to an old flame in this comic sequel.
Seattle, 1989. Aspiring poet and habitual weed smoker Jasper Trueblood, 30, is leaving his partying ways behind. He enjoys his job teaching English as a second language at a community college—a position in which he makes frequent use of a ventriloquist dummy named Bosworth—and he’s engaged. Of course, his fiancee, Daphne, is still a bit of a party animal, and they don’t have too much in common outside of a certain insatiable lust for each other—but how long can that last? Not very long at all, it turns out, as Jasper learns when he comes home early to find Daphne enjoying the lust of another man. During the resulting personal crisis, Jasper decides to buy a ticket to Guam to drop in on his old college girlfriend, Lani Sablan, without contacting her first. He expects Lani to be shocked, but actually she foresaw Jasper’s arrival in a dream—though that doesn’t change the fact that he is in very real danger from her meth-dealing husband. After a brief stay on the island, Jasper escapes with his life back to Seattle, thinking his trip down Memory Lane is over. But a few months later, he gets a call from Lani, who wants to bring her daughter, Rose, to the Pacific Northwest and stay with Jasper. “I’m an emotional wreck, Jazz,” she tells him. “My tropical depression evolved into an all-out typhoon. I need a new start. Rose does, too. I’ve never been to Seattle, but I hear it’s beautiful.” Is Jasper about to finally have the adult life—and adult love—that he’s dreamed of? Maybe. But it will involve quite a bit of tragedy, a prison sentence, and several sessions of talk therapy with a stripper named Ginger Snap.
Hickey has a natural way with words. His descriptions are original and often quite funny. Daphne, for example, is an “ever-slumbering but ever-amorous opossum.” But the writing is sometimes a bit too cute, particularly the dialogue, which often seems to serve no purpose other than to momentarily amuse readers. The question of why is a recurring one. For example, why do all the characters seem so taken with Jasper, an overweight, horny, perpetually stoned man with a ventriloquist dummy? (Readers, by contrast, will struggle to find him charming.) There is a larger question regarding just what the novel is trying to say. Potential thesis statements are littered throughout the text—many of them spoken by Ginger Snap, a walking, talking male fantasy that bears little resemblance to a human woman—but by the end, the book does not succeed in being about anything. Nor is it just a simple lark, given a particular and needless death that the author has seen fit to include. The story’s female characters, who should be intriguing, are ultimately only there for the redemption narrative of the decidedly uninteresting Jasper. The experience will be an unsatisfying one for many readers.
A humorous but disappointingly stunted tale about a would-be poet’s adventures.Pub Date: March 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-57-877891-4
Page Count: 231
Publisher: Painted Rock Press
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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