Though their conceit can occasionally feel constricting, Wahl’s stories bring old concepts to new, vivacious life.
Short stories offer a whirlwind tour through the history of philosophy via a series of hapless lovers.
By reputation, philosophy seems the opposite of fiction. Abstract where fiction is concrete, rational where fiction explores emotional truth, philosophy might seem an odd—or at least deeply challenging—framework around which to build a collection of stories. But here fiction and philosophy are paired like wine with cheese. Often a philosophical principle informs the story, as in the opener, where Zeno’s paradoxes of motion undergird the tale of a woman seeing a movie with her crush who vividly imagines what would happen if she acted on her desires (“Zeno and the Distance Between Us”). In the title story, steeped in cybernetics, an AI and robotics researcher goes to a get-together with scientist friends in the aftermath of being left by her longtime partner and confronts her unsolvable loneliness. Sometimes, the philosophers themselves, or their creations, make appearances in the stories: In the rollicking “I Also Dated Zarathustra,” a dating show contestant picks Nietzsche’s philosophical protagonist as her love match; their resulting trip to Las Vegas is a cascade of misadventures culminating in Zarathustra falling in love with a mannequin. (“She smiled at me over his shoulder, apparently delighted, as she was with all things. She went with him into the night with her eyes wide open.”) Elsewhere, Wahl borrows structures: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with its numbered propositions here describes a student’s infatuation with her seminar leader (“Tractatus Logico-Eroticus”). Wahl moves us through stages of relationships, from unrequited yearnings to breakups, creating subtle linkages and uniting the stories with her nimble, playful style. Surreal flashes of humor serve as a welcome counterpoint to the weight of Big Ideas.
Though their conceit can occasionally feel constricting, Wahl’s stories bring old concepts to new, vivacious life.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781609389970
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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