Ginster’s name belongs with modern literature’s antiwar activists from the Good Soldier Švejk to Yossarian.
One of the most unconventional World War I novels by one of Europe’s most important cultural critics returns to print.
The title character of this 1928 novel by journalist, editor, and film scholar Kracauer (1889-1966) is a 25-year-old architecture student in a German city referred to only as M. It’s 1914 and, with his country now at war, Ginster seems unmoved by the tumult around him. He tells an uncle: “Since a piece of land way out in the East has been occupied by the enemy, they go on about it as if it were their own personal property. They didn’t give a damn about the piece of land before.” Not even the pursuit of his own ambition seems to concern him as he “lack[s] the ability to apply such circumspection to the question of his future place in society. He would have preferred to become nothing at all....” It’s hard not to make comparisons to Melville’s Bartleby, the scrivener, except that Ginster’s passivity about the war doesn’t keep his life from being affected by it. Ginster eventually drifts into military service out of obligation to his family, but he pretends to have a “general physical debility” that puts him on “permanent” home front duty, where he serves his country by “peeling potatoes against the enemy.” At times, Kracauer’s hero, befitting the author’s work as a movie critic, seems like an amalgam of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in his often-deterred efforts to retain his individuality in the face of overpowering forces. Yet the relentless accumulation of raw details about day-to-day life within and outside the military magnifies the absurdity of war and, at times, mitigates the comedic elements of Ginster’s situation. It’s the kind of mix one expects from a conscientious reporter and compulsive aesthetician trying to make sense of a senseless time. The blend doesn’t always work well; sometimes you come across numbing stretches in the narrative reminiscent of those in Kracauer’s later critical works, such as From Caligari to Hitler (1947). But there’s an intensity of vision in this novel that carries the exuberance of a young writer not only discovering his voice but feeling confident enough to test its capacities.
Ginster’s name belongs with modern literature’s antiwar activists from the Good Soldier Švejk to Yossarian.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781681378145
Page Count: 336
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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
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