A carefully curated volume on themes of personal and group identity—inclusion, rejection, escape.
Centering on self-absorbed Jewish Generation Xers as they mature (or don’t) in 1980s and '90s New Jersey, many of these 18 stories have an autobiographical ring, but counterbalancing gravity comes from the smattering of tales about an earlier generation of Jews, real and fictional, facing concrete issues of survival.
Nadelson establishes the book's fundamental tone of ambivalence, doubt, and guilty regret in the opener, a sly, almost impersonal snapshot in which an upwardly mobile narrator identifies with the squatter who has invaded his former home. The narrator, or someone very like him, returns in the last story, “Going to Ground,” recalling the moment in his 20s when he was torn between a lover who felt too familiar and the risky adventure of travel. With the exception of a few tough, troubled women, like the high school outcast who gets revenge in “The Depths” or the failed actress who suffers humiliation in “Cut Loose,” Nadelson’s stories are dominated by boys and young men. The still innocent 14-year-old in “Sweet Ride” is fascinated by his neighbor, a high school nerd–turned–college dropout. On a spree through Europe, an imprudent recent college graduate spirals into ethical purgatory while avoiding the visit to Auschwitz he'd promised his mother. The men in “Safe and Sorry” and “Last Bus Home” both face their inability to protect endangered women because “the world was far more complicated than most people wanted.” Proof of that complexity comes through historic anecdotes—anti-Semitic author Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s romantic pursuit of Jewish sculptor Louise Nevelson (“Liberté”); Zero Mostel’s heroic blacklisting that led him to paint instead of act (“Butterfly at Rest”)—and semifictions about Jews in Depression-era Brooklyn (“The Payout”), Communist Russia (“The Cake”), and 1944 Berlin (“Caught”). Strikingly, the title story concerns Jews rejecting Jews. After her synagogue snubs her publicly disgraced family, a woman shrieks, “This is how you treat one of your own.”
A carefully curated volume on themes of personal and group identity—inclusion, rejection, escape.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-943491-25-4
Page Count: 260
Publisher: BkMk/Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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 tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
