A quiet yet engrossing exploration of the period following a cultural revolution.
A novel focuses on drugs, free love, and one man’s daily escapades in mid-1970s San Francisco.
Billy Johnson is just getting by, but he seems mostly OK with that. He likes to read works by Beat poets; he toils at a T-shirt shop in the Haight (though he would like to be a writer); and he drives a Volkswagen bus named Kozmic. In his downtime, he enjoys a lot of drugs and dabbles in romance. While Billy casually dates Ti, he also has his eye on Lannie and her “frustrating elusiveness.” Throughout this drama, Billy remains mainly passive, adapting to his various situations. Yet there’s also a quiet sadness to him, as when he reminisces about an ex-girlfriend and their dreams. The couple thought they “could find a way to rent a house over here…leapfrog the bay to Marin, where hippies lived in paradise.” But he faces a huge shock when he discovers his roommate chose suicide. Later, when Billy gets the opportunity to pen a magazine article, his dreams of writing are renewed, but his deepening relationship with Lannie and his increasing drug use may have dire consequences. The vibrant Bay Area locales that Billy visits are the true stars of Mater’s story: “At Broadway, I crossed with the crowd, then entered City Lights Books, passing through the main room with its novels of the moment, browsing tourists, and perishable magazines.” Yet Billy’s near aimlessness, along with the tale’s slow pace, is the book’s most intriguing aspect because it mirrors the purposelessness other characters feel living in the post–Summer of Love era. There are holdovers from previous cultural shifts: a woman who blows bubbles and peddles her poetry; all the Grateful Dead T-shirts that Billy sells; and his appreciation for the Beats and his inability to live up to them (“God, the standard they set”). The author highlights the characters’ desires to cling to the beautiful moments of their youths while examining how many are moving on. Constantina, one player, asserts: “I marched like we all did. What did it mean?…But that was then. This is now.” Mater’s novel is not an exciting page-turner, but his vivid descriptions of the city and his protagonist will draw readers in nonetheless.
A quiet yet engrossing exploration of the period following a cultural revolution.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73682-301-9
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Boulevard 55 Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2022
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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