A gritty coming-of-age tale for the ages.
Drug violence, religious strife, and a star-crossed romance play out in this Shakespearean tale set in a Bristol neighborhood of Caribbean and Somali immigrants called Ends.
Born into a large, "infamous" family of Pentecostal preachers with Jamaican roots, Sayon Hughes, the young narrator of this debut novel, is mostly raised by his grandmother alongside his many cousins. Along with them, he has inherited "generations of trauma passed on by relatives" and intensified by "a system intent on keeping us in place." Drawn into the drug trade by his cousin Cuba, whom he considers his brother, Sayon is arrested for dealing and serves six months in jail. The sentence is one of many setbacks that threaten his relationship with the bright and upstanding Shona Jennings, a Baptist preacher's daughter and aspiring record-label owner whom he and everyone else assumes he'll marry. "If looks could kill she had a knife at my neck," he says. After being pushed into a shocking act of violence, Sayon is so afraid of Shona’s finding out about the misdeed that he strikes a deal with her father, Pastor Lyle, who knows what happened but has his own dark secrets to keep. He won't tell his daughter about the incident if Sayon promises to cut ties with Cuba and the rest of his family, repent, and become born again while living in the Jennings house. There's no way that plan is going to work, but Pastor Lyle's open hatred of Muslim Somalis ultimately has a positive effect in awakening Sayon to Islam, a religion that makes sense to him. One of the many notable achievements of this remarkable debut by the 23-year-old McKenzie is to sustain our affection for Sayon even when he is acting badly. "Childhood and innocence are only synonymous to the privileged," he says. Recalling Zadie Smith's masterpiece White Teeth (2000), published when she was 25, this is the most exciting U.K. debut in years.
A gritty coming-of-age tale for the ages.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-42014-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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