An insistently unlikable main character and redundant storytelling add up to an unsatisfying novel.
A 90-year-old man’s life story is told, and told again.
This novel opens with musings about the memoir its protagonist meant to write, then abruptly switches to his funeral. Doyle Shields of Michigan—retired embalmer, Marine veteran, widower, and recovering alcoholic—has died at age 90, in the shower, while receiving oral sex. In its first chapter, the third-person narration describes him as someone who came to the enjoyment of reading only late in life, and notes that “reading had made Doyle all the more boorish, with mindless and unsolicited opinions and an inextinguishable flow of banter and blather.” The rest of the book sets out to prove it. It tells the story of Doyle’s life in spirals rather than a straight line, turning around his several obsessions. One is his horrific experiences as a teenage Marine in the South Pacific during World War II. Another is his long, mostly happy but ultimately unfulfilled marriage to Sally, whom he fell for in fifth grade and married right after the war. He sees it as unfulfilled because of another of his obsessions: oral sex, which Sally’s devout Catholicism ruled out as nonreproductive. (That leaves it forever conflated with religion in his mind, although he considers himself a nonbeliever.) After Sally’s death at 65, Doyle meets Johanna, an almost comically idealized younger lover who isn’t interested in marriage but puts up with his prattling and bossiness and seems as enthusiastic about giving and getting head as he is. He also hires an assistant and platonic companion, an even younger woman named Hypatia, whose main job seems to be to listen to him complain. There is emotional heft to some sections of the novel, especially the gruesome passages about the war. There are a few flashes of humor. The prose is occasionally lyrical, but it’s more often florid, overstuffed with elaborate, frequently repetitive description. That’s magnified by the looping structure, which returns to the same events with an effect that’s dulling rather than dramatic. By the time Doyle succumbs, it’s old news.
An insistently unlikable main character and redundant storytelling add up to an unsatisfying novel.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781567927054
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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