An irrepressible Florida frolic filled with lost dreams, forlorn love, and horror movie lore.
A West Palm Beach story about a boy obsessed with a horror movie star.
As Wilborn’s latest novel opens, lanky 17-year-old Michael Donnelly has already crossed the line. The son of Donnelly Avionics CEO and West Palm Beach millionaire Alex Donnelly, young Michael is a horror film fan, obsessed with the works of director Mario Bava, the “Fellini of gore,” the mind behind such masterpieces as Kill Baby Kill and Blood and Black Lace. Unfortunately, Michael is also obsessed with up-and-coming horror movie star Dawn Karston, to whom he’s mailed what he considers movie storyboards worthy of her artistry but law enforcement would consider death threats (Wilborn’s novel takes place in the 1980s, when parents and cops alike have movie-obsessed John Hinckley’s attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan fresh on their minds). Faced with the hard facts, and knowing that both he and Michael are still reeling from the suicide of Michael’s mother, Crystal (“the loss of a woman they both loved,” he reflects, “hadn’t brought them closer together”), Alex decides to have Michael committed to Palmdale Haven for the three weeks Dawn Karston is filming Swamp Fiend II in the nearby Everglades. Michael, “a gawky mantis of a kid,” learns of this plan and goes on the run with his father’s credit card and soon falls in with blustering Cavanaugh Reilly and his lover, Lola, who promise to help smuggle Michael onto the Swamp Fiend set before his father’s private investigator finds him—although, to up the ante in a relentlessly clever plot, they’re also thinking of double-crossing him before the money runs out. It’s an antic, very Floridian tale, populated with larger-than-life characters and full of Carl Hiaasen–style dry humor and Elmore Leonard–style sharp descriptions. The characters all have penchants for funny one-liners, and a kind of zany logic binds their very strange separate worlds. Wilborn packs a lot of fun and human insight into a slim number of pages.
An irrepressible Florida frolic filled with lost dreams, forlorn love, and horror movie lore.Pub Date: June 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-940300-48-1
Page Count: 306
Publisher: St. Petersburg Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2021
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
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.
Infertility, family secrets, and alpacas all figure in Quindlen’s latest meditation on mothering and domesticity.
Polly’s life looks enviable. Happily married to the adoring Mark—a vet at the Bronx Zoo—she teaches English at a private Manhattan girls’ school and loves her work. She has a protective older brother and close girlfriends, who’ve formed a book club where no one is expected to read the book. But Polly desperately wants a child and, at 42, knows time is running out. She and Mark have gone through endless fertility treatments, to no avail. Meantime, Polly’s friends have given her a DNA kit as a jokey birthday gift, and something mysterious shows up in the test results. Then, out of nowhere, a young woman contacts her, suggesting they may be related. That’s not all: Polly feels estranged from her mother, a revered judge who’s insufficiently maternal in her daughter’s view. Her father has always cherished her, but he’s in a nursing home now with a rapidly failing mind. And something is amiss with her best pal, Sarah. Quindlen’s trademark empathy is evident throughout, and her wry humor leavens some of the serious goings-on. Early on, Mark and Polly visit a fertility clinic with photos of babies in the waiting room; for Polly, “it felt…like a Weight Watchers facility with hot fudge sundae pictures on the wall.” Then we meet these charming alpacas, humming and pronking, on a farm run by an earth mother, whose wisdom will help Polly get on with her life. The plot swerves around a bit, there may be one surplus narrative thread (e.g., Polly’s star student Josephine running aground after graduation), and at the end, the author ties things up too neatly, pushing the “circle of life” theme too hard.
Though uneven, this is still a pleasurable, comforting read.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2026
ISBN: 9780593734605
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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