Compassionate, gross, deeply compelling. A must-read.
Ten lurid stories of magic, metamorphosis, and real-world longing.
In the title story of this debut collection, a woman is haunted by a more-or-less friendly ghost who will not stop encouraging her to kill herself. The ghost is ruining her love life and interfering with her day-to-day activities, yet, rather than exorcise it, the woman embraces it, mulling over the pleasure she takes in the sensations of her body in contrast with what the ghost has to offer: death as calm and quiet, as “the longest lie-in on a day where no one is coming to visit and there is nowhere else to be.” In “Next to Cleanliness,” Catherine goes to a doctor for a cleanse. She assumes she is in for “a week of celery juice,” but is instead treated to an escalating series of witch-doctor tonics that strip her down to her literal skeleton. When the frustrated doctor proposes a final-straw treatment—an “extraction” to remove “something toxic built into [Catherine’s] system”—Catherine must decide how much of herself she is willing to lose for the elusive promise of happiness. And in the exuberantly disgusting “Squirm,” Laura cares for her father, who has somehow transformed into a giant tape worm. Torn between a desire to escape her filial duties and a sincere tenderness for her father, Laura hovers in a state of limbo where it seems her best option might just be to sink into the compost next to Dad. The main characters of these strange tales are universally mired in unsatisfying romances, careers, or caretaking relationships. Yet, instead of reorienting their lives toward self-actualization, as our pop psychology–obsessed culture would recommend, they often choose to lean into their situations, transforming their literal selves into more of whatever it is one might fairly assume they would seek to escape. In these unflinching stories, Keating builds a macabre world in which her characters are utterly free even within their various compulsions, constraints, and grotesque circumstances.
Compassionate, gross, deeply compelling. A must-read.Pub Date: July 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781668061503
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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