An ingenious narrative that explores the meaning of love and interconnectedness across time.
A computer game designed by a troubled young woman from Cincinnati becomes the unexpected link between her 1983 self, a robot, and people from a far-future Earth.
Nineteen-year-old Becks loves computers; governed by a language and a logic she understands, they give her the invisibility she craves. Better still, they make her feel close to her Uncle Ben, a computer-game programmer who sometimes writes code with her. When Ben dies, he leaves Becks a half-finished game about an astronaut intended to help his niece process her grief. What neither of them realizes is that the completed game will play a key role in a seafaring adventure that takes place 600 years in the future. Weaving together multiple stories and forms (such as mythical, epistolary, and computer-game narratives), and told from different perspectives spanning centuries, Elan’s novel offers an epic journey across time and space wrapped in a mystery. The game Becks creates, Homebound, becomes beloved by many others, including Tamar Portman, a Berkeley bioengineering professor, who, in the late 21st century, creates a type of advanced robot called an Aye. Like Becks' game, Tamar’s creation goes beyond anything she expects when one Aye, Chaya, reveals awareness of their own lonely singularity. The robot survives into a future 400 years from the time of their making to become a crew member on a cargo ship trading in whatever “ghost-things from the past” its crew can salvage from the ocean. As Chaya bonds with Yesiko, the reluctant captain, they become driven to understand a story about a spaceship captain “written into [their] memory in the earliest days of [their] existence.” Unique and complex, this novel tells an unexpectedly moving story of love, loss, and how the past shapes—and haunts—our present.
An ingenious narrative that explores the meaning of love and interconnectedness across time.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781668201732
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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