A thoughtful and funny historical romp featuring a fascinatingly sympathetic Marx.
Carlson’s novel chronicles the unlikely adventures of Karl Marx in the American West.
As the story opens, famed political philosopher Karl Marx is aboard a ship on his way to the New World. He’s fleeing a crowd of creditors, and he’s hoping for more in America than just an escape: “If the reports about the gold in California are only half true,” he writes in a letter to his wife, “I am confident I will be coming home to you and the girls as a new man, able to pay our debts and erase the shame of poverty.” Marx’s landfall is less pleasant than he had hoped; he gets mocked, tossed overboard, and stuck in deep river mud, and he’s being followed by Prussian agents of King Frederick William IV who are intent upon rifling through his papers in search of his notorious Manifesto and amusingly relay the great man’s misadventures (“We have seen nearly every day,” they breathlessly report, “how Marx drinks the local rotgut whiskey to the point of extreme gesloshment”). Marx is befriended by a teenager named Sixto, another renegade running from his past, and the two commence a series of escapades against the backdrop of 1849 California and the madness of the Gold Rush. “It seemed like half the human race was hellbent on striking it rich,” thinks Sixto, not yet aware of the crushing irony of this observation in the company of the author of The Communist Manifesto. As Carlson expertly guides his narrative to the possibility of a socialist republic in Gold Rush California, he misses no opportunities for sly humor or surprisingly touching scenes between Marx and young Sixto. The book’s irresistible comedy is reinforced by all of the letters Carlson includes from the people who are disappointed in poor, harried Marx, including his partner, Engels, and his wife, Jenny (“Don’t bother to defend the indefensible,” she writes to him. “Our marriage is, as you might put it, a dialectical wreck”).
A thoughtful and funny historical romp featuring a fascinatingly sympathetic Marx.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2025
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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