The story of a strong woman in an unruly place is marred by a jumbled plot.
An immortal woman delivers a love letter to Los Angeles.
In Deón's lauded debut, Grace(2016), Naomi fled 19th-century Alabama slavery to hide in a Georgia brothel; in this new book, the author again channels the voice of a Black teenager on the run. Sarah Shipley, aka Louise Willard, washes up in a Los Angeles alley naked of memory and nearly all her clothes. It is 1930. “We’re all on the verge of somebody else’s violence,” Sarah states on the opening page, speaking from the year 2102. It may take 20 pages for readers to find their bearings, but the dislocation is worth it. Deón dots her text with some superb phrasing and the knowledge that “Los Angeles has always been brown.” A social worker places Lou with a seemingly kind foster family in Boyle Heights, the kind of neighborhood that prompted W.E.B. Du Bois to declare that Black Angelenos were “without a doubt the most beautifully housed group of colored people in the United States.” Lou comes of age amid Prohibition and grows close to Esther Lee, an aspiring actress whose Chinese American family runs a legendary boxing gym—until Route 66 construction plows it under. Lou secures a desk in the basement of the Los Angeles Timesand a job writing features on dead folks, a juxtaposition that lets her riff on mortality even as she struggles to understand her place among the Immortals. Some of this is intriguing; other parts are a muddle. Deón has a weakness for aphorism, which can wobble into sermonettes, including the entirety of Chapter 9. She is on better footing in Mr. Lee’s boxing gym, where the details are vivid. There, Lou meets a fire captain from Alabama whose face she has been drawing compulsively. This novel is sexy even if its love story breaks no ground. More memorable is Metal Wally, a bigoted student from Lou’s high school who dogs her LA life. The scene at his funeral is riveting; so is a section on the catastrophic 1928 failure of the St. Francis dam. Deón, a criminal attorney, has a nose for corruption and a knack for cinematic scenes. “Passengers and beasts, it seems, we all are," she writes, "on our way to some other destination.”
The story of a strong woman in an unruly place is marred by a jumbled plot.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64009-302-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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