A varied and well-written collection despite the disappointing portrayals of women.
A debut volume of short stories focuses on history, glamour, and crime in America and abroad.
Maitland-Lewis’ collection opens with a fictional episode in the life of Ernest Simpson, the ex-husband of Wallis Simpson, whose divorce allowed her to marry former British King Edward VIII in 1937. Now 62 years old, Ernest is down on his luck—his tie is “tied in a strategically positioned Windsor knot to mask its frayed places,” and his Manhattan rent is in arrears. He wants a famed New York City newspaper to, among other things, pay him and help him write his memoir in exchange for providing letters that show he “changed the history of the world.” This claim piques the interest of the paper’s editors to learn what these documents offer. “Mr. Simpson” is one of many pieces of historical fiction in this collection that involve royalty, Nazis, and/or Ivy League universities. Although one story is set on a decidedly stark New Zealand sheep farm, most locations glitter, including a five-star hotel in Geneva, a Fifth Avenue co-op, and a sun-drenched California freeway (with a bright red Ferrari, no less). The writing is clean and strong, and the ages of the central characters span from college age to a certain age and nine decades or older. High-end product placement permeates the volume—for example, a dowager wears vintage Cartier diamond jewelry, a man admires his new Patek Phillipe watch, and a woman sports thigh-high Saint Laurent boots. Themes of loss (money, lovers, youth) and unrealized potential weave through the intriguing and wide-ranging stories, as do incidents of blackmail and experiences with antisemitism. But with few exceptions, women fare poorly in the tales. Female characters include a nymphomaniac, strippers, sex workers, a former porn star, a woman who fakes a pregnancy to trap a rich husband, a would-be murderer, a successful killer, and a “fat, bulbous”-lipped girlfriend who’s “a pain in the ass.” One character pretty well sums up the treatment of women in the book with this statement: “Women are like mangoes. They are either green, ripe, or rotten.”
A varied and well-written collection despite the disappointing portrayals of women.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hildebrand Books
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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