A selection of profound stories teeming with a host of relatable individuals.
Everyday life is a journey for the characters in Drago’s short-story collection.
In “The Pit,” an unnamed narrator details their blue-collar job at the Basic Oxygen Lance Furnace. The “unbearable” heat that comes with slagging steel, coupled with inherent dangers (including a task that only a 300-pound man can do), give the impression that this workplace is the very pit of Hell. The casts in these eight tales lead ostensibly quiet lives that harbor turmoil: “Mountain Stone” finds Ginger Dressinger hoping to reconnect with the Rocky Mountains she visited years ago with her family. But this simple endeavor proves nearly impossible, as no resort has a vacancy, leaving her to spend a rainy day burdened by resentments she struggles to let go. Likewise, structural engineer Andy has a new job lined up in the closing story, “Equilibrium,” when his co-worker, Clinton Hanley, having just won the Irish Sweepstakes, offers to hire him. Clinton’s plan is to build a small city in Arizona with an unusual design that may be too much for Andy to handle. Many of the characters herein seemingly feel out of place; that’s certainly true for the narrator in “Salmon,” who happily joins potential romantic interest Miriam on a train ride from Canada to California. Ensconced six cars behind Miriam’s sleeper car, he soon gets the miserable sense that he’s merely “third class” compared to the woman he’s pursuing. He’s just one of a handful of sympathetic souls Drago introduces, including a mother with terminal cancer, a janitor who has livelier conversations with plants than people, and a vegetable/marijuana farmer who realizes that clearing others off his land may not be what he really wants. The author’s unadorned yet insightful prose sparkles: “They were green eyes and detailed sharply with intelligence and a fatal ingredient, fatal to me, and this element was humor.”
A selection of profound stories teeming with a host of relatable individuals.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2023
ISBN: 9798888550069
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Chestnut Hill Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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