A fun, if talky, tale of an endearing May-December friendship.
A widower and a teenager set off on an important road trip together in Semegran’s contemporary novel.
In Austin, Texas, 65-year-old Hank O’Sullivan spends a lot of time at his favorite local bar drinking away his loneliness after losing his wife and daughter in a car accident. In a parking lot scuffle outside a bar, Hank fights back in self-defense and earns himself a court-mandated sentence of 40 hours of community service. It’s there, while cleaning up trash on the side of the highway, he meets 16-year-old Luis Delgado, a Puerto Rican boy serving his own community service hours after being caught trespassing. Luis, a talented artist, lives with his father in the same neighborhood as Hank. After Luis and Hank form an unlikely friendship, Luis finds out Hank plans to visit Houston to reignite an old high school romance and asks if he can tag along to reconnect with his estranged mother, who also lives in Houston and who Luis hasn’t heard from since he was young. In a hot pink 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, the duo embarks on a road trip filled with drama, car troubles, a lesson in map reading, and lots of waffles. Semegran proficiently shifts between Hank’s and Luis’ points of view, which helps both characters feel fleshed out. An overuse of description can sometimes slow the pacing (“He set the bag on the carpet, then put his shoes on—the black wool sock on his right foot with a hole in it for his big toe to receive fresh air, the cotton sock on the left the shade of coffee with heavy cream”), but the unique relationship between the two unlikely, sympathetic pals keeps the story rolling.
A fun, if talky, tale of an endearing May-December friendship.Pub Date: March 22, 2024
ISBN: 9780875658681
Page Count: 224
Publisher: TCU Press
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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