A thoughtful exploration of race and class tensions in modern-day Britain and of the lingering effects of a long-ago tragedy.
A heated contest for leadership of a contemporary British labor organization drives a novel that confronts difficult issues of race and class in that nation.
When Nayan Olak and his former ally Megha Sharma, both of Indian descent, face off for the chance to serve as the first person of color to be general secretary of their union amid the Covid-19 pandemic, their campaign quickly degenerates into an ugly brawl, marred by allegations of racism and an accusation of a physical assault by one candidate against the other. The events are recounted by Sajjan Dhanoa, a writer who grew up in Nayan’s hometown of Chesterfield, England. There, two decades earlier, a fire killed Nayan’s mother and his young son as they slept in the apartment above the shop his parents owned. That event triggered the breakup of Nayan’s marriage, and he’s haunted by memories of the tragedy, especially as he cares for his father, who survived the fire and now suffers from worsening dementia and Parkinson’s disease. Amid the unrelenting pressure of the campaign, Nayan pursues a relationship with Helen Fletcher, a white native of Chesterfield who may have some connection to the fatal blaze, and whose son Brandon, an aspiring chef, has had his own disastrous encounter with racial conflict that prefigures the Nayan-Megha battle. Sahota frames the election contest as one pitting Nayan’s “transracial, working-class solidarity” against Megha’s “inclusionary neoliberalism,” which emphasizes racial identity, allowing their face-off to serve as a microcosm of these tensions within the larger British society. For the most part, that conflict emerges organically, save for a somewhat didactic rendering of it in the campaign’s climactic debate. Despite some occasionally awkward foreshadowing, the novel resolves both of its main plot threads in efficient, and satisfyingly surprising, fashion.
A thoughtful exploration of race and class tensions in modern-day Britain and of the lingering effects of a long-ago tragedy.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780593655986
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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