A clumsy family saga whose would-be provocations are more comic than harrowing.
Three French siblings are keeping busy in the early 1950s: Journalism, entrepreneurship, murder…
This novel by Prix Goncourt winner Lemaitre is the second in a planned Glorious Years tetralogy (following The Wide World, 2023), starring the Pelletier clan, which in 1952 is highly ambitious and thick with secrets. François, a rising editor at a Paris newspaper, is struggling in his relationship with Nine, a deaf alcoholic kleptomaniac who’s gone missing, while shepherding a blockbuster series on French women’s poor hygiene. His sister, Hélène, is a journalist covering the opening of a dam in the countryside that will flood a provincial town while seeking an illegal abortion. Their brother, Jean, is about to open a second megastore but has to deal with employee protests and a vicious harridan wife, while hoping the papers don’t discover his sideline as a serial killer. Too much? Absurdly so? Mais oui! Which is unfortunate, because there are glimmers here of deep research and emotional sensitivity. Hélène’s plot in particular deals not just with the torments that come with displacing a whole community, but also the country’s draconian anti-abortion laws, which push her to an unlicensed treatment that goes badly. But Lemaitre is so determined to deliver a brash, symphonic novel that his story clangs and strains credulity. Jean’s wife, Geneviève, is cartoonishly evil, blithely cuckolding her husband and glorying in her in-laws’ shortcomings. And a needless subplot features the siblings’ parents sponsoring a mediocre boxer in Beirut who surprisingly fails upward. Lemaitre might intend to reveal the dark side of France’s charming postwar reputation, or perhaps he means to critique the cruelty and violence families bring on each other, knowingly or not. But this manic, pulpy novel makes it hard to trust any serious intention.
A clumsy family saga whose would-be provocations are more comic than harrowing.Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780316576154
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 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
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
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