Audacious, insightful, bold, and—with its critique of ableism—necessary.
A disabled woman confronts her sexual desires in this debut novel.
Japanese author Ichikawa starts off with a bang, as it were, with the heading that opens the book: “My Steamy Threesome With Super-Sexy Students in One of Tokyo’s Most Sought-After Swingers’ Clubs (Part I).” That’s the title of an article written by Shaka Izawa, a self-described “more or less bedbound woman with a serious disability.” Shaka lives in a group home that she has inherited from her parents; she lives with a rare genetic disease called myotubular myopathy, which, she explains, means that “the blueprint for my muscle tissue was flawed. There might have been no dramatic degeneration, but that didn’t alter the fact that my muscles were incapable of growing, maintaining themselves, or aging in the same way as those of someone without the condition.” Shaka fills her days with distance-learning at a university, freelance writing, and posting provocative things into the online void—or so she thinks. A care worker named Tanaka discovers her posts, including one in which she writes that she “might as well start investigating sexual services for women” and one in which she says she wants “to get pregnant and have an abortion, just like a normal woman.” When she offers to pay him for sex, the encounter goes wrong. Ichikawa has crafted an unforgettable character in Shaka, who is mordantly funny and disarmingly blunt, and who critiques ableism sharply: “Japan…works on the understanding that disabled people don’t exist within society, so there are no such proactive considerations made. Able-bodied Japanese people have likely never even imagined a hunchbacked monster struggling to read a physical book.” The novel delivers with a fever-dream ending that Ichikawa pulls off beautifully. Some readers might be shocked by this brave novel; others might find themselves interrogating their own ableism. This is an absolutely stunning debut.
Audacious, insightful, bold, and—with its critique of ableism—necessary.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593734711
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 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 tart meditation on narrative and integrity.
A writer’s meeting with his mentor goes complicatedly awry.
Lerner’s slim fourth novel opens with an unnamed narrator arriving in Providence, Rhode Island, on a magazine assignment to interview Thomas, a professor who’s “among the world’s most renowned thinkers about art and technology.” Just before leaving his hotel, though, he accidentally knocks his phone in a sink, bricking it. His sole means of recording the interview gone, he triages, suggesting that he and Thomas conduct a pre-interview that evening and do a full-dress conversation the next day, after he can get the device fixed. The setup seems thin, but, this being a Lerner novel, rich ethical and philosophical questions fly off it: He’s concerned with the ways that an interview poisons authentic conversation, with our over-reliance on technology, and the moral dilemmas of talking to an unreliable source. (Thomas, 90, seems distracted and sometimes dotty.) Lerner’s true subject isn’t an interview so much as it is misapprehension and miscommunication; after the meeting with Thomas in the first section, the second and third parts are concerned with characters’ failures to understand something about each other, be it a romantic partner’s wishes or a child’s eating disorder. That last challenge makes for some of the most vivid, offbeat, and affecting writing Lerner has delivered—a surprise, given his fiction is typically marked by DeLillo-esque sangfroid. Another surprise is the relative embrace of a conventional story arc, as the narrator faces a reckoning about living in a “deepfake” world. This is slighter fare for Lerner but surprisingly potent given its length, interested in the ways that we manufacture our identities and how technology speeds the process along.
A tart meditation on narrative and integrity.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780374618599
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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