A sometimes-frustrating but often effective bildungsroman.
In Sleeper’s debut novel, a young journalist travels to Japan in search of her troubled lover.
Lucy is a young woman who knows little of the world outside of books—she majored in both journalism and literature, “semi-expecting to become a reporter after college”—and she mostly keeps to herself. However, as she heads into her final year at Northwestern University in Illinois,she finds herself on a new path when her family fractures in the wake of her father’s sudden death. She also falls in love with a confident new Japanese student named Owen Ota and becomes fascinated by his home country. Owen tells her that he is a “gaijin”—a term for foreigner that some find derogatory—and even goes so far as to say that he feels out of place in his own family. Just as the college students’ relationship deepens, Owen suddenly returns to Japan, and after that, the two communicate little. Lucy becomes obsessed with finding him, and while working at the Chicago Sun-Times, she applies to be a reporter for a small newspaper in Okinawa, Japan. After she’s hired but right before she moves, she learns that Owen tried to kill himself before disappearing once again—adding yet another layer to his mystery. Sleeper’s novel is predominantly the story of Lucy's coming-of-age as she learns that the object of her obsession is far from the perfect man she imagines him to be. The author also shows how Lucy learns that reading about a foreign country doesn’t prepare an outsider for its complicated reality: “I wasn’t just a green reporter, I was a green person, a product of my insular suburban upbringing.” She uses the word sensei in reference to Owen, as she feels that he’s become her teacher in life; however, as the story goes on, the author gets across the sense that everyone Lucy encounters is her teacher, so deep is her naiveté. At times, the depiction of Lucy’s confusion can feel overly repetitive. However, by the end of the novel, Sleeper makes a strong case for adventure as the ultimate instructor.
A sometimes-frustrating but often effective bildungsroman.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947041-67-7
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2020
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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