Often alarming and upsetting, but worth reading for the deep heart at its center.
British writer Dineen’s dystopian story about a woman struggling to keep her children safe in a world on the brink of collapse feels uncomfortably as if it’s describing not a fictional future but next week.
Cass lives in “The City,” never named and located in the south of a country also unnamed but with a British feel. It’s facing extreme versions of conditions familiar today: an increasingly hot climate, frequent fires, collapsing infrastructure, corrupt authoritarian government, extremist gangs, and fraying social norms. Choosing to work abroad, Cass’ husband, Nathaniel, a doctor, has left her behind in The City, where she attempts to protect their children from deteriorating conditions. Many of the strong mothers in recent fiction pale in comparison to Cass, with her fierce maternal commitment—not only to her own baby but also to the 4- and 8-year-olds whose mothers died during Nathaniel’s previous two marriages. She experiences typical moments of contemporary motherhood, from easing a resistant child to sleep to resenting a husband’s lack of involvement to sexual fantasizing, but Cass also deals with the breakdown of electricity and communication technology, has a room devoted to bottled water storage, worries that the kids have become used to breathing burned air, and regularly rehearses “terror runs” in her head to prepare for the potential moment when she must escape with the kids. Then a group of male climate activists—Nathaniel thinks they’re incels—attacks a playground. Cass first heads to her mother-in-law’s secluded rural home, where there’s food and breathable air, but staying with the untrustworthy Eden proves untenable. Cass’ next stop is a commune of sorts in the supposedly safe, walled-off north. But safety is never certain; Cass’ choices, never easy to make. The new world order described by Dineen’s graceful prose is sometimes unbearably depressing, yet this is not an apocalypse. Happiness remains a possibility for Cass and her kids.
Often alarming and upsetting, but worth reading for the deep heart at its center.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781419767951
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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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