A fast-talking, ball-juggling tall tale about long shots, escape attempts, and other bad decisions.
An ambitious but aimless street hustler becomes a rolling stone when he’s dragged into a bank job gone awry.
What to make of a character who’s so much like his creator—gifted in weird and dazzling ways, prone to misadventure, and with a persistent habit of talking about his junk? This could be the fictional biography of the verbal half of Penn & Teller had things gone badly wrong once. Here the raconteur injects himself into lead character Poe Legette, a well-meaning ne’er-do-well making his way through the rock ’n’ roll 1970s. Poe is a graduate of clown college—really—who’s raking in fat stacks as a comic juggler in Philly. Things go awry when a pal ropes him into a half-assed bank robbery, during which a bystander is killed. Panicked and on the run, he heads for the first place that comes to mind: Hibbing, Minnesota, birthplace of one Robert Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan (“I didn’t have a guitar, but I had balls”). There, he changes his name, falls in love with an implausibly oversexed librarian named Marion, and reinvents himself as a Renaissance Faire axe-juggler. But when the consequences of his actions follow him to his newly adopted home, Poe must rely on his loud mouth and quick wits to get out of mortal danger. Since his debut novel, Sock (2004), Jillette has generally married his whip-smart, raunchy sense of humor to hard-boiled plots, but there's less gunplay and femme fatales here than you’d expect from this sort of thing. We do learn lots of fascinating shop talk, from the nuts and bolts of juggling to “cold reading” a mark to crowd work. What remains is a very funny, oft-vulgar cautionary tale that doesn’t pull any punches, even about ol’ Bob himself. “The whole idea of genius,” Poe scoffs. “Everything is just hard work. Everything is juggling.”
A fast-talking, ball-juggling tall tale about long shots, escape attempts, and other bad decisions.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781636142388
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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
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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