A sensitive portrayal of a sensitive spirit facing challenges in a complex era.
A shy young Jewish boy growing up in mid-20th-century New York City experiences feelings of inadequacy and alienation at a boys summer camp in Steinberg’s debut novel.
Ten-year-old Albie Greenberg enjoys using his father’s binoculars to observe people from a distance from his apartment window. The boy feels very much apart from others, in part due to a “sense of strangeness” that permeates his family. He’s a sensitive and introverted child who seeks refuge in books and dreams from a world in which he doesn’t seem to fit. When his parents enthusiastically announce that he’ll be going away to Bear Lake sports camp for the summer, he understands instinctively that the vigorous atmosphere of male athletics won’t be for him. Once there, he immediately becomes the target of bullying from other boys and from counselors who punish disobedience and vulnerability with painful “noogies.” Albie finds his only friends among a handful of other “unwelcome and inept” boys. The atmosphere of danger only increases when the camp is placed under quarantine for polio. Albie finds that there’s a darkness in him as well as fantasies of escape. In re-creating Albie’s inner conflict, Steinberg’s narrative skillfully evokes the postwar trauma and denial that characterized 1950s America. For example, his immigrant father’s hearty attempts to assimilate into American culture seem to be part of an effort to put an ominous past behind him; the author also shows the effects of trauma on Albie’s uncle and grandparents and how his mother only cultivates a brittle optimism with the aid of regular purchases at the liquor store. The camp is a particularly vivid microcosm of a larger society that’s torn between dark fears and bluff arrogance. A brief flash-forward scene in which an older Albie visits relatives in Zurich feels more like a tantalizing distraction than a satisfying revelation. Overall, though, the novel is a realistic and affecting examination of the effects of societal pressure.
A sensitive portrayal of a sensitive spirit facing challenges in a complex era.Pub Date: March 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73602-860-5
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Forsesi Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2021
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
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