Some novels consider what makes a family; this novel instead asks how families of choice function.
A painful, but also drolly original, excavation of family trauma through the perspectives of three sisters and their old-school activist mother.
Jojo and the Twins is a band named after members Emma and Araminta Tayloe, identical twins so similar that Emma attends Ara’s therapy sessions, plus their younger sister, Josephine—who isn’t in the band but might as well be, given her genetic, familial, and self-selected role as everyone’s savior. “Everyone” includes their geographically and emotionally distant mother, Roberta, or Bertie, who when the central dilemma of the story takes place is at sea with a ship full of supplies for refugees in Gaza. Josie, a passionate student of entomology who never finished her doctorate, now cohabitates idly with childhood friend Dean and works at a local butterfly and reptile exhibit. Mostly she keeps tabs on her sisters, whose blockbuster hit “American Mosh” made them rich—until they let the money slip through their fingers along with the years. Now in their mid-30s, Emma and Ara try to get by on occasional paying gigs, and Emma acts as Ara’s bagman, doling out bumps of heroin the way a mom might dole out animal crackers to a toddler. But when Ara and her ex-husband, Roman, try a quick scam, both wind up in jail, Ara in the nearby women’s prison the sisters could once see from their childhood backyard. She’s taken under protection by Bertie’s old friend Janice, in for life due to crimes with the Weathermen in the 1970s, and while Josie spins out with anxiety over Ara’s drug use and Emma’s brain starts to spin with a new concept album titled Jailbreak, Ara gets clean and sober. She’s finally ready to detox from family enmeshment—and then gets tangled up in her bunkmate Kyla’s custody drama. The author’s quick pacing and pitch-perfect details, down to the sisters’ preferred Boston diner, will sustain readers through the anger and loss, on to a satisfyingly real resolution.
Some novels consider what makes a family; this novel instead asks how families of choice function.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2025
ISBN: 9781668056066
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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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