A slim, earnest novel about the ways in which parents can hurt us for life.
A woman attempts to move beyond her anger at her dying father in Bryant’s novel.
Sixteen years ago, Yvette’s mother died. Then her father, a pastor, quickly dropped out of her life to be with his new wife and stepdaughter. Unlike her sister Zoe, Yvette has never fully gotten over either of those losses, even as she’s grown to be a successful woman, wife, and mother. Now Yvette is about to turn 42—the age her mother was when she died—and mortality has been creeping into her thoughts. So have her feelings about her father, which she claims to experience less as pain than as a sort of emptiness. “It somehow bypasses the emotions that accompany caring and instead migrates to not having any feeling at all,” she thinks. “It settles into a level of indifference unmatched by any spite or unwavering ill will.” On a routine trip to her Georgia hometown to visit Zoe, Yvette receives a surprise: Zoe has conspired to arrange a meeting with Vera, the stepdaughter from their father’s second marriage. Though Yvette and Vera are similar in many respects—Vera also has a husband and daughter—they have radically different understandings of their father. To Vera, the Pastor (as she calls him) is a loving, dependable, and loyal man, and she can’t understand why Yvette would shut him out of her life. Yvette feels betrayed by the setup; even after learning that the Pastor has been diagnosed with cancer, she does not want anything to do with him or his new family. When everyone in her life encourages her to make amends, Yvette attempts to let go of her long-held animosity—unsuccessfully, for the most part. But could Vera hold the key to understanding the distance between Yvette and her father, a secret from years ago that, if brought to light, might change Yvette’s understanding of their strained relationship?
Bryant alternates between Yvette’s and Vera’s points of view over the course of the novel, revealing how the Pastor’s decisions have shaped their respective lives. Even for Vera, who enjoyed the love of living and happily married parents, the irregularity of the Pastor’s two estranged daughters forms a painful wrinkle in her understanding of her otherwise-functional family. Here, Bryant allows Vera to share her side of the story, in typically confessional prose: “It was years before I was privy to the whole story, but in short, his wife had died and his daughters had abandoned him. Based on the whispered conversations I’d overheard, I was sure the decision was driven by his daughter Yvette’s selfishness. If only she’d known.” The novel is brief at under 150 pages, but the plot proceeds slowly, providing Yvette and Vera with little to do aside from stewing in their respective fears and resentments. (Both have highly supportive husbands, which mostly keeps their inner pain from manifesting as real-life drama.) Their emotions are certainly understandable, but the story’s attempt to resolve them feels slightly contrived and simplistic. Some readers will no doubt tear up at the final reveal, while others may wish for a bit more messiness.
A slim, earnest novel about the ways in which parents can hurt us for life.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781963874204
Page Count: 158
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2025
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 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
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