A touching but unpolished look at living with mental health problems.
A novel focuses on a New Yorker’s recovery following an attempted suicide.
Duffy’s latest book follows Marc Ziller, a 28-year-old man admitted to a psychological hospital and diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder after an attempt to take his own life. Marc forges a deep bond with social worker Lauren Davidson. Lauren guides him through the ups and downs of dating while he manages his mental illness, maintains a low-wage job, and rebuilds a sense of purpose. At the outset, the author’s premise contains a glimmer of potential à la One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Readers will expect to view society’s dysfunctions and paradoxes through the eyes of an outsider and the other misfits he meets. But Marc is discharged rather quickly, and the narrative never quite delivers on this possibility. Instead, Duffy pushes deep introspection aside to depict a series of Marc’s dead-end relationships and his obsessive quest for 15 minutes of television fame. Particularly repetitive are the accounts of Marc’s counseling sessions with Lauren, who oddly reinforces Marc’s connection between his self-worth and his financial instability by questioning his decision to date as a low-wage earner. But despite their somewhat dysfunctional dynamic, their mutual care for each other becomes clear over time and their poignant relationship is skillfully depicted by the author. Lauren, after leaving her career to marry and have a child, finds fulfillment in continuing to help Marc. And with Lauren’s help, Marc is able to find a new normal. After a video of an embarrassing first date goes viral, Marc discovers a former girlfriend is behind the fiasco. There is a rich moment of satisfaction when Marc finally stands up for himself and assertively confronts this ex, who had rejected him based on his mental health. He declares: “I’m a person. My disability doesn’t define me nor does it define what I am capable of.” Unfortunately, many of the chapters suffer from a glaring lack of description, leaving little relief from Marc’s persistently narcissistic internal monologue. In addition, stiff dialogue and declarative plot points move much of the prose along.
A touching but unpolished look at living with mental health problems.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-69440-468-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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