A colorful, bighearted novel about a summer of hauling trash.
In Neville’s debut novel, a youth finds his path while working as a garbage collector.
In 1969, 18-year-old Jesse Wheeler is a graduating high school senior looking for a job in the Chicago suburb of Freedom, Illinois. He manages to find work manning a garbage truck at Willard Sanitation Services despite showing up late for the interview and getting his car stuck in the company’s gravel driveway. It’s an appropriate position for a guy whose life has been trashed: Jesse hasn’t gotten into college, his father recently died, his mother is moving away, and his best friend just started sleeping with the girl Jesse’s been pursuing all year. Little does Jesse know he’s just entered a new, dysfunctional family made up of formerly incarcerated garbagemen, including the lisping, mocking foreman Billy Bartkowski; the dead-eyed chain smoker and former car thief Grits; a long-haired convenience store robber called Zeus; and a laconic murderer known as Pickles. This unlikely community—which comes to include Grits’ beautiful niece, Iris—proves to have a lot to teach Jesse, who soon acquires the not-exactly-flattering nickname Tippy Toes. The author has a talent for memorable descriptions, as when the crew enjoys a post-work beer: “Billy, Grits and I stood like dirty scarecrows behind the truck. I took a seat on the steel edge of the trough and Grits sat on the curb, his bony knees extending toward the dimming sky like church steeples. Billy turned his orange carry can upside-down and sat on top of it, squashing it nearly in half with his bulk….” The strange milieu and its stranger characters are so compellingly drawn that the reader quickly grows invested. The narrative occasionally lapses into the clichéd and the sentimental, and its attempts to be heartwarming are not always successful. Even so, the reader can’t help but enjoy the ride, flies and all.
A colorful, bighearted novel about a summer of hauling trash.Pub Date: March 27, 2023
ISBN: 9798985282764
Page Count: 272
Publisher: IFD Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
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
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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