Ambitious in its themes, this novel of the immigrant’s journey lacks focus and authority in the telling.
Shreiber’s historical novel traces a young woman’s journey from Soviet Leningrad to a film studio in Los Angeles.
Nadia Argo is coming of age in the late-1970s Soviet Union. Pampered by her parents, Boris and Lena, she is a rising star at the prestigious Leningrad University, a natural beauty, and a budding poet. But it’s the Brezhnev years, and Nadia is surrounded by deprivation, food shortages, and fellow citizens acting as spies. The daughter of a Jewish film director, Nadia could lose all of her privileges in a heartbeat. This is exactly what happens when Nadia’s fascination with her new neighbor (Victor Nabatov, a charismatic but secretive diplomat’s son) draws the unwelcome attention of the authorities. When Nadia and her mother request permission to emigrate following Boris’ death, the situation spirals out of control. They are forced out of the country and must rebuild their life in the U.S., surviving the dehumanizing early months in New York and Palo Alto, California, until Nadia finds her calling in Los Angeles, returning to her first love and her father’s legacy: the world of filmmaking. While the story is compelling, it takes a long time for the novel to find its rhythm. The early chapters are told from various, often peripheral characters’ points of view, making it difficult to grasp the main thread. The funniest and most compelling voice belongs to Yasha Lansky, a cinematographer and Nadia’s benefactor in Los Angeles, who rants, “Ten years in this country and still ‘Where you’re from’? Every damn waiter wants to know my life story. And if I complain, people say, Oh, but Americans are curious…” The hardships of immigrant life are a worthy subject, though readers will hardly find anything new in these pages beyond the revelation that highly educated people often have to take menial jobs upon moving to the U.S.
Ambitious in its themes, this novel of the immigrant’s journey lacks focus and authority in the telling.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 347
Publisher: manuscript
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2023
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
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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