A deeply felt novel whose characters will feel familiar and fresh all at once.
A group of high school students face burgeoning authoritarianism in Laser’s future-set novel.
The story takes place in 2045, which looks much like our present, aside from updated technology and a political climate that resembles that of the 2020s United States but extrapolates what effect an additional two decades of ideological division might have. In the shadow of encroaching neo-fascism, the students at Ocean Park High in coastal New Jersey still live through familiar adolescent dramas. Bob is the new kid, more conservative than his classmates but with an open, inquisitive mind; Kristi, soon to be a full-fledged activist, rails against the indignities being done to the Constitution. Oliver and Fuzzy are the class clowns and resident videographers who work at a store with Elora Shalom, a Chinese American girl whose physician mother is in the throes of a mental health crisis. Then there’s lonely Danai, a somewhat recent arrival from Africa who’s ashamed to tell her classmates that she makes ends meet by cleaning houses with her mother and contends daily with the realities of being an undocumented immigrant. Finally, there’s Cardo, the school’s resident heartthrob, who’s doing some not-so-secret business of his own dealing underground apps to classmates while pining for Elora, the one girl he can’t get to notice him. If these characters, who feel comfortingly familiar, remind readers of high school archetypes, that’s because they are; but while Laser hasn’t reinvented the wheel here, all of these teenagers’ personalities are drawn with enough individuation to allow them to rise above mere type. (“Danai laughed, until she saw that her mother was crying. She worried that her mother would never forgive her for laughing so soon after her father had died.”) Political dystopia is a common element in today’s literary landscape, but Laser takes time to bring real pathos to his characters rather than treating them as pawns deployed for satirical or political aims. The result is a narrative that is both engaging and memorable.
A deeply felt novel whose characters will feel familiar and fresh all at once.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798218896010
Page Count: 319
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 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 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
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