With this exhilarating and unforgettable work, Solomon proves to be a formidable writer.
A family tragedy occasions this startling reimagination of the haunted-house genre.
Ezri Maxwell and their sisters, Eve and Emmanuelle, have begun receiving increasingly alarming texts from their mother. Or, rather, someone claiming to be their mother. When Ezri was a teen, admission to Oxford University granted them—Black, nonbinary, and neurodivergent—the ideal escape from the hostile, entirely white gated community outside of Dallas in which their parents, seeking upward mobility, made a home. Ezri’s childhood was haunted by frightening, unexplainable occurrences for which they were often blamed, and they’ve been estranged from their parents since leaving home. The siblings have suspected for years that something dark, supernatural, haunts the rooms of 677 Acacia Drive. Yet their parents—unyielding, clinging to their upper-middle-class life—have refused to budge. When communication abruptly stops between their sisters and parents, Ezri must return to Dallas with their daughter, Elijah, in tow. After nearly two decades, Ezri revisits 677, where they find both parents dead. Though the local police report that the Maxwells planned a murder-suicide, the siblings are far from convinced. They can’t agree, however, on whether their parents were killed by supernatural forces or not. In evocative prose, Solomon harnesses and recasts classic horror tropes to tell an original story of race and class, family, trauma, and grief. Each character—including the parents—is finely rendered, with the dynamic among the siblings illustrating the ways loyalties shift and change, in constant renegotiation, and dramatizing the ruptures activated by traumatic events. The novel’s construction is elliptical, with past and present alternating from chapter to chapter. Most are narrated by Ezri, with a few shifts in perspective. While this may throw some readers off, the twists and turns are carefully drawn, with the tension mounting toward a shocking end. Readers should be aware that the novel features themes of grooming and child sex abuse, and Solomon is thoughtful in their treatment of these heavy issues.
With this exhilarating and unforgettable work, Solomon proves to be a formidable writer.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780374607135
Page Count: 304
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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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