A wide variety of thought-provoking tales.
Kelly presents a brief collection of offbeat short stories that span multiple genres.
In this anthology, readers will find eclectic works divided into three sections: “New Fabulism/Slipstream,” “Speculative,” and “Meditations and Benedictions.” In “Wax Works,” which was previously published in The Fabulist, she offers an offbeat take on the legend of Icarus, with a boy made of wax melting after getting too close to a microwave. In the horror-tinged “Kahlo,” a woman’s insurance coverage runs out during the middle of heart surgery, so instead of sewing the organ back inside her chest, the surgeons leave it outside her body, connected by seeping tubes and bloody bandages. During a war between gods, two deities fall in love, while another is trapped in a sheep’s body in “Sheep Baah Baah Baah.” Several tales feature solitary figures grappling with the wider world in their own unique ways; for instance, in “Upper Management, or GodCo., LLC,” angels test out a “de-lonesoming device,” and one woman questions the contract they’re required to sign. In “The Best-Known Unknown People Who Maybe Drew Breath Upon the Planet,” which appeared in the Kenyon Review, a man writes letters to the editor and op-eds under assumed names (a series of personas he’s created whom he pits against one another in his imagination and in print); it’s a work that straddles the line between the literary and the fantastic. In “Graceland and Greenland and Disneyland”—a notable example of a story without any fantasy elements, other than one character’s dreams of a better future—a runaway travels to Pittsburgh by train and briefly meets an older woman who had youthful adventures as a Rockette. Sarah B. Mohler, an associate professor of English at Truman State University in Missouri, offers a thoughtful analysis of Kelly’s work at the end of the collection that focuses on the stories’ genre fluidity. Readers looking for fiction that’s outside the mainstream, no matter what genres they generally prefer, are likely to find much to enjoy here. These are stories with sometimes-hidden depths that may be revealed to readers in moments of quiet consideration.
A wide variety of thought-provoking tales.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9798891320468
Page Count: 134
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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