Stories that echo with the loss, regret, and hope of migrants and nomads.
Widows, orphans, and refugees from Korea make their ways across alien landscapes in seven new stories.
Yoon’s work, whether in novels or short fiction, tends to create miniature mysteries, but his latest is all unanswered questions and old regrets. In the opener, “Bosun,” a life of crime leads to one of life’s crossroads for an ex-con working at a Canadian casino. Cold war politics provide the backdrop but not the drama in “Komarov,” which finds a North Korean maid who's lived in Europe for years traveling to Russia circa 1980 to reunite with the son she left behind, now a professional fighter. Yoon’s interest in history also extends further back in two stories. The first, “At the Post Station,” is set in 1608 and follows a feudal samurai on a diplomatic mission, while "The Hive and the Honey" is an epistolary ghost story in the form of a letter from a solider to his uncle written on the steppes of Eastern Russia in 1881. Most of the stories are little more than fleeting moments in the lives of the Korean diaspora, such as “Cromer,” in which the children of North Korean defectors find their domestic happiness in London interrupted by a strange boy. There’s a pervasive atmosphere of loneliness and forced solitude as reunions go awry and destinies lay unfulfilled, but there's also the steely stubbornness of people who have no choice but to keep going. These feelings are palpable in the final two stories, starting with “Person of Korea,” in which a 16-year-old boy is orphaned by the death of his uncle and sets off for a remote island where he hopes to be reunited with his father, a guard who works at the prison where the boy’s grandfather was once confined. Finally, “Valley of the Moon” chronicles the life of a man whose trespasses against others eventually translate into violence against his children.
Stories that echo with the loss, regret, and hope of migrants and nomads.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781668020791
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 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
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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