A combustive set of stories that flare and then fizzle.
Ordinary people struggle to find greater meaning in Fortunato’s debut short-fiction collection.
In “The Zone of the Train,” a middle-aged would-be writer decides he needs to follow his hero Ernest Hemingway’s advice and “get into the zone of the bull.” His solution? Playing a game of chicken with an oncoming train. A retired millionaire in “Ending in Death” comes back from a trip to Europe convinced that one of the tourists in his party was murdered. But is this would-be detective merely bored? In “The Great Piano Rebellion,” a Tony Award–winning composer, desperate for his next hit, begins imagining that his piano’s keys are talking about him behind his back; at least, he hopes he’s imagining it. In 11 stories, Fortunato explores the elusive nature of art, faith, and death, from a grieving father tempting God’s wrath in an Israeli synagogue (“The Torah Scrolls”), to a couple melting down in airport traffic (“A Walk in the Park”), to a woman suspected of murder writing up a confession of sorts to be stored unread in a time capsule (“My Testimony”). The title story revolves around a temp at a sketchy financial institution who takes it upon himself to save the job of his attractive co-worker. He has no romantic intentions toward her and can’t fully explain why he feels the urge to help her: “I had personally come up with an extension to the Joyful and Sorrowful mysteries,” he says, alluding to some of the Catholic mysteries of the rosary. “I called them the ‘Ordinary Mysteries.’ ” For him, these mysteries include women, love, and the question “Why?” Indeed, “Why?” is the one mystery that most often plagues the characters in this book.
Over the course of this work, Fortunato’s prose has a conversational bounciness, and his narrators, regardless of their circumstances, tell their stories with a notable sense of relish. “The interrogation was much less dramatic than the police shows I sometimes watch because there was no background music playing,” writes the suspected killer in “My Testimony,” for example. “No, the drama was being created by what we were discussing, death, probably murder. Now that I have your attention….” The premises are all strong, and some of the stories feel almost classical in their simplicity. However, the author rarely makes the most of these setups, largely because he fails to access the basic emotions and behaviors on which they’re built. The story of the grieving father doesn’t manage to sell the father’s grief, but rather devolves into an unconvincing competition between two friends with different beliefs regarding the existence of God. Similarly, the tale of the couple in traffic leads to a very low-stakes traffic arrest and a bout of cathartic profanity that would be at home in a cheesy romantic comedy. The author clearly knows how to get readers’ attention; the problem, time and again, is that he doesn’t manage to keep it beyond the first few pages.
A combustive set of stories that flare and then fizzle.Pub Date: March 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73-631344-2
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Central Park South Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
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