An uninspired snapshot of the country’s current moment.
In Duffy’s sequel to Stockboy (2013), Phillip Doherty works at a novelty store again and feels torn between the East and West coasts—and between two different women.
As this novel opens, Phillip is despondent. His second book was a critical success but a commercial failure and he and his fiancee, Melissa, are having relationship problems, in part, due to financial strain. She works tenaciously at her job, but Phillip struggles to find a position. He eventually resigns himself to working, again, as a stockboy at Milton’s World of Fun—this time in San Diego instead of New York. As the pressures of everyday life build, Phillip finds himself looking at online-dating websites and becomes enamored with a teacher named LeAnn Kennedy. Melissa and Phillip soon agree to separate, and Phillip then decides to drive to New York to start his life over despite Californian LeAnn’s romantic overtures. Almost as soon as Phillip arrives, an unnamed virus strikes the country, causing closures and layoffs in the city and elsewhere. Lonely Phillip finds his heart pulled back to San Diego by both Melissa and LeAnn. Duffy traverses a lot of ground in this novel. By effectively setting the action duringthe current Covid-19 pandemic, Duffy offers intriguing insights into the plight of workers deemed essential or nonessential as well as the measures businesses take as they struggle to stay afloat. However, the prose feels flabby and polemic. Characters discuss how the country has become a “stockboy nation” because, as Phillip says, “We’re a bunch of people peddling items other people created to make money to survive.” The repetition cements Duffy’s point but does nothing to develop the argument further. The dialogue is often stilted and unnecessarily expository, and although Duffy provides glimpses of Melissa’s and LeAnn’s inner lives, the focus largely remains on Phillip, who’s often passive and indecisive. When Phillip receives a visit in the latter part of the novel, it’s a pleasant surprise, but it doesn’t affect him very much as a character.
An uninspired snapshot of the country’s current moment.Pub Date: June 11, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-65-007277-5
Page Count: 261
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2020
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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