A creative but mixed bag of sometimes-bizarre tales.
A short story collection about the problematic lives of mostly young people.
The opening story, “Dead Uncle,” follows Roy, a Maine entrepreneur who owns the state’s only drive-thru funeral business, which gets its share of mentally exhausted caregivers finally experiencing personal freedom. In “Uninscribed Tablet,” a CIA double agent perplexes the unnamednarrator who tries in vain to unscramble her motives and capture her romantic attention; the speaker of “Don’t Leave Me Alone!” reflects on the friends he made and betrayed in grade school, and what became of them. In the longest and most fully realized story, “Surgery Without Anesthesia,” a carload of road-tripping buddies embark on a journey to Cape Cod and fill the journey with good-natured ribbing and “surface-layer bullshitting”; only at the end of the story do readers learn of one friend’s secret, which comes as a shock to the others. Overall, this is a breezy collection of tales that stretch the boundaries of the short-fiction form in a moderately appealing fashion. However, many are narrated in the immature voices of teenagers and too often feel like clipped scenes from a larger story. This is apparent in the standout “Fair-Weather Best Friends Forever,” in which a carload of high school seniors runs out of gas and the narrator, after years of rickety friendships, grows weary of them as they walk to a party. Here, the author’s characterization is at its most lucid and the situation is compelling enough to make readers want more. However, the tale ends just as the plot starts to simmer. Other works disappoint as they amount to mere sketches of a plot or a fleeting thought, such as the dreams of a transatlantic traveler or the panic-stricken diatribe of an insurance adjuster whose self-described “Double Life” is exposed by a felonious co-worker. Two short “essays” form the collection’s perplexing conclusion, including one credited to a “ghost contacted by Ouija board.”
A creative but mixed bag of sometimes-bizarre tales.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 57
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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