An impressive debut by a storyteller with bountiful insight and assurance.
Though the Civil War is over when this novel opens, the threat of violence and the persistence of bigotry still loom over a Georgia town.
Somewhere between the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox and the beginning of Reconstruction, George Walker and his wife, Isabelle, live alone and emotionally estranged from each other on their family homestead just outside the village of Old Ox. They are mired in grief over the presumed death of their only son, Caleb, a missing Confederate soldier. At this low point in the Walkers’ lives, Prentiss and Landry, Black brothers freed from slavery, wander onto the couple’s barren land seeking little more than temporary shelter on their northbound trek in search of their mother, who was sold away from them in childhood. George reaches out to the two Black men for help in restoring his farmland with a peanut crop. In return, he offers to pay them whatever he can to help subsidize their journey. Warily, the brothers agree to George’s request, and eventually the three of them succeed in coaxing plants from the reluctant ground. Then one windy morning, Caleb returns home bearing an ugly facial scar and stories of his incarceration in a Union prison camp. What he doesn’t tell them is that he was beaten with a rifle butt by his captors because he’d deserted his own side and in the process, also deserted his wealthy boyhood friend and secret lover August Webler, now also a war veteran returned to Old Ox and soon to wed a local girl by a prearranged agreement. Despite his fury over Caleb’s betrayal and his impending marriage, August rekindles their romance, which sets off a series of tragic events involving murder, injustice, and, eventually, wholesale destruction. Throughout the tumult, all three members of the Walker family discover reserves of unexpected courage and resolve—and one can’t help believing that if most of the other characters carried within them the empathy and grace displayed by the author of this compelling postbellum saga, most of the awful things that happen to them and their immediate surroundings would have been avoided.
An impressive debut by a storyteller with bountiful insight and assurance.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-316-46127-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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