A moving work of wit and pathos.
Decades after losing a legal battle, a Vietnam War veteran recounts his side of the story in Kun’s novel.
Jimmy Nail believes that his college roommate, Peter John “P.J.” Darbin, stole and published his novel, which went on to become a seminal work that’s the darling of critics, teachers, and young adults. This first-person retelling follows Nail’s fragmented thoughts as they slide from the past to the present and back again. What begins as a darkly comedic tirade against Darbin and the legal system turns into a disjointed unraveling of his life story, which includes a traumatizing tour of duty in Vietnam, the collapse of his marriage and family, and his young adulthood in Baltimore. As Nail’s early years take center stage, the book settles into a reliable groove as the protagonist presents sections of his own short novel and intersperses them with recollections of events from his own life. At the heart of all the stories is Nail’s relationship with his neighbor Poppy Fowler—in Nail’s novel, she’s called “Poppy Fahrenberg,” and in Darbin’s, “Poppy Fahrenheit”—who likes the awkward, allergy-ridden Nail (in both novels, he’s “Allie”). As the novel rolls on, readers get the feeling that Nail’s accusation is not so fantastical. Kun, the author of Eat Wheaties! (2020), effectively manages to keep all the parts of his protagonist together, maintaining a clear throughline in spite of Nail’s inability to remember events with any sense of order. The author also plays around with tone, including mimicry of J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield as well as a watered-down impression of Kurt Vonnegut’s work. The imitations are a far cry from the original, though, and Kun does best when he allows the main character to speak in his own voice. The ending will certainly leave many readers shocked, but it elevates the work and gives it unexpected heft.
A moving work of wit and pathos.Pub Date: May 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-95-015452-4
Page Count: 348
Publisher: The Sager Group LLC
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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