A lively but profane comic tale.
A well-endowed dilettante seeks to turn around his train-wreck life in this debut picaresque novel.
Painter Puchy Mushkin’s identity is entangled with his prodigious phallus (“Big Puchy”). “Truth is, my penis is the perfect metaphor for my talent,” he explains early in the story. “I was born with too much of it and have been dragging it along like a box of rocks ever since.” He’s an artist who doesn’t believe in sharing his art with the world, which is why he works a “straight” job as a caterer. When his wife leaves him as a result of his myriad anti-social qualities, the bisexual Puchy decides to date men for a while, beginning with an ill-fated courtship with a handyman named Robby. That relationship ends with Robby crucifying Puchy to a wall using a power drill and three-inch screws. The resulting scandal leaves Puchy a laughingstock, disowned by his parents, and without any reasonable way to make a living. In response to his state of failure, Puchy decides his problem is that he’s been trying too hard to succeed. He needs to start quashing his own desire so as to never be disappointed. After Robby attempts to murder Puchy in the hospital, the hero flees to Los Angeles to crash at the home of his former college roommate Shane Addams, hoping to lay low until he can testify against the handyman in court. LA is a hard place to forsake desire, it turns out, especially since Shane wants to make a movie about Puchy’s life, and every woman he meets wants to take his famous appendage for a spin. As he dips his toes in the city’s seedier corners—including the mayoral race—will Puchy be able to kill that oppressive tyrant, desire? Or will his appetites lead to the destruction of everyone around him?
The energetic novel presents a wide variety of adventures starring Puchy. But the tale rests somewhere on the more offensive end of fratire, and Shallman seems eager to challenge readers’ senses of decency whenever possible. Puchy has few redeeming qualities, and he narrates his story as though he’s deliberately trying to be as off-putting as possible. Here, he describes being recorded by strangers while having sex with one of his co-workers at a rave: “When Gretchen noticed we were being filmed, she immediately decoupled and ran off screaming, like the little Vietnamese girl in the painting, leaving me alone in the cabana with Big Puchy. This is not good, I thought to myself, scanning the crowd, hoping someone might take the hint and finish him off.” Despite the initial graphic description of sex with Robby, the vast majority of Puchy’s escapades are with women, running the gamut in terms of fetishes and transgressions. Beyond a kind of sophomoric ribaldry, the author’s artistic aims are unclear. There are a lot of jokes about Judaism, some jabs at electoral politics, and an unexpectedly violent third act, but readers are left without much of a sense of what any of it was for.
A lively but profane comic tale.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2023
ISBN: 979-8-9863548-0-4
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Flying Bed Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2022
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
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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