If wild queer comedy can somehow be used to thwart evil and bring about world peace, this is the book that will save us.
A struggling young actor is recruited to help an all-gay special ops team save the world.
At 25, Andrew Birnbaum is nice-looking and talented at both acting and singing. He loves comedy and improv and can do a one-man version of Wicked, playing everybody, in under 10 minutes, though only close friends have seen it. He’s barely paying the rent on his basement apartment in the far reaches of the East Village selling scented candles at a store called Smells of the Season when his best friend, Brock, invites him to a meeting of a dinner club called the Tuxedo Society. There he meets a delightful and diverse group of gentlemen and ladies whose professions involve everything from luxury real estate to selling replacement china on the internet; there’s a Navy SEAL, an OnlyFans star, and a former Olympic swimmer. While visiting the men’s room, he witnesses a wild encounter involving several of the tuxedoed diners that leaves two dead, no-goodniks who were part of a group intending to assassinate the first lady. Turns out, Andrew is being recruited to join a group of LGBTQ+ superheroes for his ability at improv—and the next thing he knows, he’s at the White House impersonating a cater waiter, helping to foil the next attempt on the life of Reata Pershing, an absolute goddess of a Black first lady whose fabulousness and wardrobe selections were certainly inspired by Michelle Obama. Andrew proves to be a lot better at this work than he would have thought, and his action-packed escapades with the Tuxedo Society take him to Paris, the Vatican, and beyond. Rudnick jams more comic energy into a single sentence than seems physically possible, his agile metaphors flying like gymnasts across the page: “My erection wasn’t my fault, because he was deliberately done up as British librarian/Nobel finalist clickbait, like Eddie Redmayne in any British biopic where he crosses an Oxford quad in October, hunched from calculating a theorem or composing a sonnet.” His descriptions of the attire at the papal residence alone are worth the price of admission.
If wild queer comedy can somehow be used to thwart evil and bring about world peace, this is the book that will save us.Pub Date: May 26, 2026
ISBN: 9781668212615
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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