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 dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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