A rollicking, absurdist take on the standard midlife-crisis adventure.
A nondescript man’s humdrum life becomes suddenly and unpredictably upended.
This latest novel from LaTorre introduces sad sack Joe Kerson, a disgruntled husband, regretful father of two teenagers, and beaten-down drone employee at the Soren Agency, where he hates his job, co-workers, and bosses. At the story’s outset, one of those bosses tells Joe that he must meet a prospective new client on the man’s yacht. That client, Luciano “Luke” Galdonchino, isn’t strictly on the up and up, but the agency would like to cultivate him, so Joe sets off. Joe’s path will soon intersect with a group called the Schmorde, a goofy gang of overgrown, free-spirited delinquents who live in a run-down house and enjoy various escapades. The Schmorde is led by larger-than-life figures like Ron (the brains of the outfit), the Pirate (who likes to break things), and Brute (a 260-pound enforcer). But before they enter the scene, Joe meets Luke and immediately takes in his lavish lifestyle with signature glum insights (“This Luke guy has it made, and I’m just a bum”). On the spur of the moment, Joe knocks Luke overboard and steals the boat and piles of mobster cash; impulsively recruits the Schmorde as his ramshackle crew; and embarks on a madcap sail around the world. Joe is always just barely ahead of Luke and his colleagues in the League of International Gangsters. The misadventures of Joe and the Schmorde almost immediately run off the rails.
The author piles absurdity on absurdity in the construction of his picaresque novel, and he whittles the narrative to a leanness that keeps the whole thing bubbling along at a page-turning pace. This is a broad, Rabelaisian comedy, and LaTorre has a keen eye for crafting over-the-top caricatures and seemingly mundane dialogue that’s constantly teetering on the brink of ridiculousness. The key to this kind of comedy is that the characters must be one-dimensional but not flat. Joe must be down on his luck but not repulsive; his wife and kids—who crop up to play sizable roles in the plot—must be outraged but not angry; the Schmorde must be roustabout sidekicks but not compellingly individualistic. The author comfortably shifts the tale into the fantastic (the heroes visit Phantasmic Island, presided over by President Richard Nixon and Humpty Dumpty) and then backs out of it. Luke’s increasingly shrill quest for personal revenge will have readers chuckling in the book’s second half. The story’s very gentle levels of violence and crudity never darken the humorous tone of the work. Long before readers reach the conclusion, they’ll be guessing the author has a fairly air-tight and eminently satisfying ending in mind. LaTorre deftly complicates his straightforward tale with amusing side characters like a band of inept Jamaican gangsters, and he has the storytelling skills to avoid narrative dead ends. This is a remarkably streamlined comic expedition.
A rollicking, absurdist take on the standard midlife-crisis adventure.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-578-58312-9
Page Count: 207
Publisher: Nick Daydreams
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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