A promising talent in service of an admirable goal resulting in a disappointingly didactic novel.
The lives of a diverse cast of characters intertwine against the backdrop of violence and bitter conflict in Israel and Palestine.
Jerusalem, the “city of a thousand gates,” is also a city of a thousand experiences of occupation; in Sacks’ debut, she has seemingly set herself the ambitious goal of representing as many of these experiences as possible. As they reel from twinned acts of violence—a 14-year-old Israeli girl in a settlement stabbed to death, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy beaten into a coma—various inhabitants and visitors in this contested region go about their daily lives, dealing with the usual complexities of friendship, desire, and marriage on top of the sensationalized politics that envelop them. The novel shifts among the perspectives of more than a dozen characters: Arab Palestinians living in Israel proper and in the occupied territories, Israeli Jews of various political orientations, American Jews with complicated and divergent relationships to Zionism, a German journalist trying to make her name by writing about it all. Sacks’ prose is evocative and often a pleasure to read, but her narrative sacrifices depth for the sake of breadth. Her dogged attempt to show the multifacetedness of this extraordinarily fraught conflict and humanize its players is admirable in theory but sometimes ineffective in execution. In her attempt to humanize the media circus that so often attends news coverage of Israel and Palestine, she actually ends up flattening it, as each character’s narrative feels increasingly like a counterpoint to another equally subjective narrative, a mere means to a didactic end. While some characters, such as Emily and Vera, are rich and complex, others veer into caricature, reading like boxes the author felt obligated to check rather than authentic, artful creations. With its tit-for-tat violence and carefully varied cast of characters, the novel projects an oversimple thesis that Israelis and Palestinians (as well as those with other stakes in the conflict) are both victims and perpetrators, both participants and observers in cycles of hatred and violence. The extension of that thesis is the treacly trope that if these parties could simply understand one another better, the conflict would be solved. To her credit, Sacks attempts to preempt some of the critiques commonly leveled at such narratives—for instance, she makes clear the imbalance of power in a fight between occupier and occupied—but even the inclusion of these important nuances feels inevitably formulaic. Sacks is a gifted prose stylist, but the stunning loveliness of large portions of her debut is unfortunately obscured by its formulaic both-sides-ism.
A promising talent in service of an admirable goal resulting in a disappointingly didactic novel.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06301-147-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
