No S.J. Perelman–like gems here, but this New Yorker contributor commands the form.
The travails of an aging Super Mario, the media battle between David and Goliath, and the workplace woes of the foul-mouthed Tooth Fairy are among humorist Rich’s latest concoctions.
“Our wands are defective. Our fairy dust is toxic. They make us buy our own tutus from the company store,” moans the Tooth Fairy. Now his employers are threatening him with painful measures for continually failing to secure the baby teeth of his assigned Tooth Producing Unit—which the parents had quickly encased in glass. Who else to turn to but a labor litigation lawyer? Up against the media savvy of little David, who with his cute blond looks, endearing grin, and slick correctness is “so hot everyone’s creaming themselves to get a fucking piece,” glum Goliath desperately agrees to be sponsored by a porn company. Then there’s Mario’s midlife crisis, which has him questioning his blind devotion to saving the Princess: “Did I really want to be with her? Or was her love just another form of points?” And so it goes with this misbegotten cast of characters—including God Himself, who admits to messing up with Adam and Eve and now regrets that he “set a precedent with that fucking fruit thing.” Things go better for lonely Death Skull, who makes up for his social failures with Ultra Man by connecting with a customer service worker through “male friendship speed dating.” As ever, Rich overworks the same basic schtick and the laughs are more of the heh heh variety than har har. But his follow-up to New Teeth (2021) is clever fun, never more than when rubbing our noses in our devices. Why have books? "Because it sounded smarter to say that you had read something. You couldn’t admit you’d spent the whole day watching TikTok llama videos.”
No S.J. Perelman–like gems here, but this New Yorker contributor commands the form.Pub Date: July 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780316569002
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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