Mundane events acquire a magical quality in these engaging tales.
Rietz’s short stories aim to capture the full scope of American life in the years since World War II.
In the opening story, “Christmas Holiday, 1945,” a veteran returning home to Chicago after Germany’s surrender prepares to meet the wife he hasn’t seen in two years. Upon arriving in America, he visits his sister, Edith, a nun who’s about to embark on a missionary voyage to China. In “The Visit,” a man named Rob struggles with feelings of guilt and loss as he travels from Detroit, Michigan, to Raleigh, North Carolina, in the wake of his mother’s death. In “Marooned in Marrakesh,” a married couple visiting their son, Mike, who’s joined the Peace Corps, find themselves stranded in Morocco on September 11, 2001. “Recluse” follows Vincent Jackson, a disabled Vietnam veteran who attends a music festival. A performer is murdered onstage, and Jackson—who was also onstage at the time—is wrongly suspected of murder. A married couple in “Maggie” must put down a beloved pet, and in “Hurricane Helene,” residents of Asheville, North Carolina, try to recover after much of the town, including the famous River Arts District, is destroyed in a flood; “Hitchhiking to Hingning” recalls the story of Edith that was begun in the first vignette. These deeply engrossing, slice-of-life episodes have the air of a folk song, in which characters are quickly introduced (often in medias res) and presented with low-stakes problems. The lack of resolution in several tales only further enhances a sense of the uncanny. Certain tales stand out: “Christmas Holiday, 1945” beautifully conveys the anxiety and jubilation of the first Christmas after the war’s end, “Marooned in Marrakesh” and “Recluse” feature people in desperate straits who command the reader’s sympathy, and the character of Vincent Jackson feels like someone dreamed up by Johnny Cash or Kenny Rogers. Despite the occasional anachronism (such as a woman in the 1940s eating sesame chicken, which didn’t gain popularity until the ’70s), the stories set in the past are immersive and credibly rendered.
Mundane events acquire a magical quality in these engaging tales.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9798234017741
Page Count: 154
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: yesterday
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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