An intimate personal portrait with a broader message on the mistreatment of migrants.
A Somali immigrant in 1950s Wales is wrongly accused of a coldblooded murder.
Mohamed’s third novel is based on the real-life case of Mahmood Mattan, who, in 1952, was executed for the murder of a Jewish shop owner in Cardiff, here called Violet Volacki. The miscarriage of justice, as Mohamed portrays it, is rooted in the racism and religious bigotry that hounded Black Muslim immigrants from British Somaliland (part of what’s now Somaliland). In the early going, the novel alternates between scenes of Violet's family and Mahmood (rightly nicknamed Moody) and his precarious existence. Frozen out of most jobs because of his race, he waits for opportunities to work as a sailor, spending his scarce funds at bars or the greyhound track, intermittently connecting with his estranged wife, Laura, and their children. Mahmood is questioned after the murder but dismisses its seriousness as just another example of British prejudice: “No end to the lies they tell to make a black man’s life hard.” But as suspicion leads to an arrest and then a court trial, his understandable defiance becomes a liability in a British legal system eager to convict. Mohamed’s depiction of Violet and her family is less full than her picture of Mahmood, and the alternating structure feels somewhat like an unfinished attempt to parallel the two as religious outcasts. But Mahmood is admirably full in himself: angry (sometimes violently so) but committed to his faith and sense of fairness in spite of his recognition that his Blackness was something “he was mad to think he could ever outrun.” Mahmood’s fate is never much in doubt (an epilogue brings the story up to date) but it’s an engrossing and tense story all the same. From Mahmood’s interior monologue to court transcripts to his conversations with Laura, the senses of loss and cruelty are palpable.
An intimate personal portrait with a broader message on the mistreatment of migrants.Pub Date: Dec. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-059-3534-366
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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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