Unfortunately, a book for our times—vivid enough to grab us and not let go.
Chernov’s impassioned novel poses existential questions against the backdrop of the Ukrainian war.
The book focuses on four characters: There is Eva, who lives with her deranged father (who uses the walls of their flat to plot an immensely complicated and unfinished novel in magic-marker). Next is K, a doctor who volunteers his services without political fear or favor. Maria Alexandrovna is a forensic investigator trying to solve a murder while holding things together with her young son, Tykhon, and her patriotic soldier husband, Andrei. Finally, and known only through his letters, there is the mysterious (and perhaps insane) Fryderyk, who was once Maria’s lover and now toys with her, making arch pronouncements such as “insulting someone during their suicide attempt is in poor taste.” Throughout there is war, omnipresent and ghastly. This is a massive and complicated book, one in which the reader is sometimes lost. Is it the author who sometimes addresses the reader directly (“Is this boring you yet”)? If not, what character is speaking? On the other hand, if this is indeed the “dreamtime” (the author’s term for “the generalized discord of our times"), anything goes, chaos becomes not a bug but a feature, and the narrator can be a trickster. Translated by Leonard and Helbing from the Russian version, the writing is forceful and vivid. The characters banter with gallows humor, and the urgency of K’s attempts (rendered in impressive medical and technical detail) to save lives that are slipping away hits home with great impact. Gradually, some connections are revealed, such as the fact that K is a psychiatrist who once had Fryderyk as a patient, and through that relationship a glancing connection to Maria. Toward the end of the book, he and Maria have a long, philosophical discussion about the meaning of life, fate, dreams, and the war. “War is so appalling,” says K, “it simply cannot be real.” And yet, it is.
Unfortunately, a book for our times—vivid enough to grab us and not let go.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1644699881
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Cherry Orchard Books/Academic Studies Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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