A resonant story of art, rebellion, and politics.
An illustrator seeks his fortune on the eve of the Spanish-American War.
Though it opens in 1897, Lock’s new novel feels very relevant in 2024. The narrator, Oliver Fischer, is 20 when the book begins. He’s studying art, to the frustration of his wealthy, bigoted father, who urges him to take up a career in banking instead. Much of Oliver’s time is spent discussing politics and thinking about the nature of art. Painter Thomas Eakins—one of Oliver’s instructors—instructs him to read Stephen Crane’s article “An Experiment in Misery,” an account of living hand to mouth. It’s at this point that Oliver’s life begins to draw closer to Crane’s, with the two men eventually crossing paths in Key West. The story of a young man’s discovery of what is and is not important to him is well handled here, and Lock offers reminders of the more unseemly aspects of this society, from Oliver’s father’s bigotry to a racist attack on a Chinese restaurant. The novel’s description of the unlikely alliances at work in the anti-imperialist movement are intriguing—but it’s Oliver’s voice and the lyricism of his observations that make this novel especially strong. Here’s Oliver exploring a collection of swallowed jacks in the Chevalier Jackson Foreign Body Collection at Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum: “Their number testified to the popularity of the schoolyard game and to the appetite of children for the inedible.” Oliver is a wry narrator; he observes that, as tension between the United States and Spain escalates, “the temperature of the nation’s war fever could be told by the number of exclamation marks” in newspaper headlines. In the end, it’s a book haunted by Crane’s literary work and his legacy—to say nothing of the man himself.
A resonant story of art, rebellion, and politics.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 978-1-954276-27-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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
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