An uneven but often affecting tale of an American woman and her Japanese family.
In Kamata’s novel, three characters navigate love, baseball, and the cultural space between the United States and Japan.
Christine, an American,came to Japan in 1988 hoping to improve people’s lives by teaching them English. After a discouraging time volunteering in a refugee camp in Thailand, she returned to Japan to marry her boyfriend, Hideki Yamada. Now they live in Tokushima Prefecture with their two children, 5-year-old Koji and 6-year-old Emma, the latter of whom suffers from multiple disabilities. Hideki works as a high school baseball coach, while Christine raises the kids at home. She’s a “baseball widow,” rarely seeing her spouse, who’s consumed by his desire to bring his team to the national championship. Christine is so overwhelmed and lonely that she jumps at the chance to take her kids to the States for a few months—and it’s possible that she won’t come back. Meanwhile, teenage power hitter Daisuke Uchida, born in Japan but raised in Atlanta, may be just what Hideki needs to make his team a contender. Daisuke’s acclimation to Japanese society isn’t the smoothest, but his budding relationship with fellow student Nana Takai gives him a very good reason to stick around. Kamata’s prose is direct and elegant, as when Christine and Emma run into Daisuke’s mother at a video store: “She wondered if the mothers of Hideki’s players knew that Coach Yamada had a disabled child. If not, they’d probably know by tomorrow. Word traveled fast.” The Christine-centered sections are particularly engrossing, as they explore the everyday life of an immigrant in Japan with a Japanese family and the experience of raising a disabled child with little help from an absent spouse. The sections that focus on Hideki are less dynamic, although their depiction of the world of Japanese baseball will be fun for those who are unfamiliar. Daisuke’s storyline feels less relevant to Kamata’s work, and the novel as a whole doesn’t quite cohere into a balanced narrative. As a slice-of-life story, however, it has much to offer.
An uneven but often affecting tale of an American woman and her Japanese family.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-95-433207-2
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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