A pulpy, imperfect sendup of moviemaking.
An American actor attempts to survive a chaotic South American movie shoot in Litchfield’s novel.
Dominic Graves’ career in Hollywood is not going as he’d hoped. The actor is now in his 30s, and good roles are hardly rolling in. (His most recent job was an ad for a car dealership.) When his disreputable agent Bernie Finkelman offers him the lead in a Uruguayan thriller, Dominic has little choice but to say yes and fly off for the 10-week shoot in Montevideo. There, the problems begin almost immediately. By the time he makes it to his first day of shooting—hungover and several hours late—he’s already slept with his gorgeous coworker, Sofía Prodova, and insulted her enough for her to beat him unconscious with an ashtray. Dominic then has to survive long days under the whip of the demanding and volatile director Ignacio Martinez, who is happy to put his actors in danger if it results in a better shot. “Death on a film set often turns a decent performance into a legendary one,” he tells Dominic ominously. Ignacio has his own longstanding and explosive relationship with Sofía, one that Dominic will have to navigate if he wants to end up in the final cut of A Bullet for Silver Face. (That is, assuming Dominic doesn’t actually have to take any bullets to his face.) Litchfield writes with sardonic vigor, capturing Dominic’s general distaste for his situation: “Bullets, explosions and bare-knuckle fistfights were continual, disconcerting distractions, and trying to remember lines while worried about being blown to smithereens was an eternal challenge.” But the reader struggles to sympathize with Dominic, who pours whiskey into his morning coffee and surprises his one-night stands with unwanted sexual maneuvers that make him feel powerful. The fact that all three of the main characters are both charmless and irredeemable keeps the book from being as funny—or as suspenseful—as Litchfield might have intended.
A pulpy, imperfect sendup of moviemaking.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781732332867
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Lowestoft Chronicle Press
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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