A seriously funny take on death and dying.
When renowned Israeli economist Avishay dies at home alone of an apparent heart attack, his four best friends, like him almost 70, conspire to conceal his death for a week to keep him in the running for a Nobel Prize.
Avishay is a strong contender for the honor but needs to be alive when the Nobel committee makes its decision. Yehuda, who has lived in Avishay’s shadow despite becoming rich as a young man from his invention of a kitchen bag opener, proposes the scheme to keep him “alive.” How would they want Avishay remembered, he poses: as “a nice, divorced professor of economics who had a few friends who liked him” or “a man who will be immortalized”? Not to mention a man whose foreword to Yehuda’s yet unpublished book would ensure its success if it bore the Nobel imprint? Everyone has personal gains in mind. Zohara, a single, struggling ghostwriter who has been having an affair with the womanizing Avishay for 20 years, concocts a plan to grab a big share of the Nobel prize money by claiming she was his common-law wife. Keeping the death a secret proves as hairy as it is complicated, especially after an electric bicyclist runs over the dead body during an exasperating attempt to transfer it. As much as the book—the basis for a popular Israeli TV series—thrives on dark slapstick humor, it’s no Weekend at Avishay’s. Yedlin, a master at tone, grounds the antic comedy in reflections on aging, friendship, parenthood, life as “one big effort to compensate for feelings of inferiority,” and “sadness, more sadness, respectable sadness, unsatisfying sadness, mature sadness.” In the end, the absence of real mourning on anyone’s part can be read as an embrace of life beyond death or a reflection of the shells in which many people live.
A seriously funny take on death and dying.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780063310810
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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