At once absurd and profound.
Inhabitants of a New York City tenement band together to brave the “after-after.”
Earthquakes rock Manhattan, reducing the financial district to rubble. Then weekly acid rainstorms start corroding buildings, bridges, roads, and power lines. Cell towers go down, checkpoints go up, and travel between boroughs becomes difficult. Mira tries to convince her partner, Mal, to flee Queens—now an “At Risk” zone—and go stay with Mira’s mother, Ma, on the Lower East Side, but their crumbling abode was orphan Mal’s childhood home, and she can’t bring herself to leave. Heartbroken but unwilling to die for Mal’s nostalgia, Mira returns to her own childhood home: building 4B, apartment 9A of the Gratuitous Place housing projects. Mira feels lost without Mal, though, and begins hosting a ham radio show, How To Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster, in hopes that Mal will hear. Instead, Mira’s transmissions attract the romantic attentions of Sad—the headless man who lives in unit 1A. Excerpts from Mira’s broadcast pepper Leung’s ambitious debut, which unfolds via myriad perspectives and narrative fashions. From Ma to gleeful poltergeist Grandpa Why to the spirit of an oversized queer cockroach named Shin, each boldly drawn point-of-view character adds a new layer to the story and texture to the world in which it’s set. Style occasionally overshadows substance, fuzzing the tale’s focus, and readers seeking catharsis may be left wanting, but by and large, Leung’s novel strikes a satisfying chord, harmonizing joy and optimism with despair and melancholia. Surreal imagery combines with poetic prose to illustrate what life and love look like when crisis becomes commonplace and everyone is grieving—even the ghosts.
At once absurd and profound.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781324076186
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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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