A queer coming-of-age novel that achieves rare peaks of lyricism and emotional intensity.
Twenty years later, an Irish man revisits his hometown, and his first love.
In the prologue of Irish poet Hewitt’s debut novel, set in 2022, narrator James Legh has an insight: “Every time I looked into a lover’s eyes—even, I think, my husband’s eyes—I wanted to see Luke’s eyes, green and urgent, holding me.” He decides to return to Thornmere, where he grew up and where, at the age of 16, he fell in love with a boy who was staying on a farm that was one of the stops on the early morning milk run, his first job. James is a deeply awkward and lonely boy, and coming out to his parents and classmates has only isolated him further. In addition to economic struggles, his parents have another hardship: James’s 5-year-old brother, Eddie—an adorable character, perfectly depicted—has a serious chronic illness that causes frequent, terrifying seizures. Over the next few months, James’ adolescent crush on Luke will completely consume him, leading to sublime tortures and tortuous sublimes and, finally, a critical crossroads of loyalty. Or, as James puts it, “I had come to find love, its vision, its company, to be changed by it, set free into its passionate balance, knowing that it would deplete me as much as it sustained, that it would torture me as much as it made life, the thing it threw into agony, worth living.” This is a poet’s novel, with as much nature writing as action and dialogue; Wordsworth meets Justin Torres in its aching intensity and passionate descriptions. Here is James regarding Luke as he thumbs through a porn mag: “I watched him, trying to trace any flicker of emotion or intent across his face, and all the green and golden light of the trees was washing over him, the leaves a lush blur behind him. Occasionally, a breeze would life and sway a branch, and make a lovely sighing sound, and then came the crinkling noise of a page being turned.” Readers looking for gorgeous language and richly developed atmosphere will be impressed and moved.
A queer coming-of-age novel that achieves rare peaks of lyricism and emotional intensity.Pub Date: April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9780593802847
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 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
SEEN & HEARD
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