A provocative set of tales that, though with grim moments, celebrate life, language, and love in the face of death.
The famed writer delivers a brilliant series of intimations of mortality.
Several of the stories here are set in Rushdie’s native India. The opener, “In the South,” recounts two octogenarians, Junior and Senior, who pass their days arguing about this and that: The younger, by 17 days, exults in being a native of southern India, “warm, slow, and sensual,” while the older retorts, “Suppose men had imagined the earth the other way up! We would be the northerners then. The universe does not understand up and down; neither does a dog.” Senior awaits death, eager to be free of his teeming family. Alas, his wish doesn’t come true, death claiming the other, which doesn’t stop their arguments from continuing. “Death and life were just adjacent verandas,” Rushdie writes, having had plenty of cause to ponder the matter. The following story, “The Musician of Kahani,” winds its way through some 80 eventful pages, tracing the fortunes of an academic family grown suddenly superrich and investing heavily in the musical education of their brilliant daughter, a master of both sitar and classical piano and many other instruments, who, oddly, turns her tremendous skills to eldritch purposes. The closing line is delightfully chilling: “And Chandni, who doesn’t laugh a lot, whose default expression is sort of grave, is smiling her strange little smile.” Eldritch indeed is the next long tale, “Late,” a bona fide ghost story, its protagonist a newly deceased one-book writer whose secrets are ferreted out by an enterprising exchange student from India (“Her hometown was far away. Books were her homeland now”) who just happens to be able to see and speak with the shade—and, in the bargain, help him take just revenge. The last entry, “The Old Man in the Piazza,” enigmatic and arch, closes with something of an epitaph: “Our words fail us.”
A provocative set of tales that, though with grim moments, celebrate life, language, and love in the face of death.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798217154197
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 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
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
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