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 delightfully nostalgic novel about how the things we loved in the past have the power to shape our future.
A boy band cruise is the site of one woman’s post-divorce healing.
Annie never meant to end up alone on a Boy Talk cruise, but that’s exactly what happens when her sister breaks a leg and has to bow out of their vacation. Now Annie is sharing a cabin with a stranger, stuck on the cruise ship American Fantasy with the 1990s band—and thousands of their biggest fans, known as Talkers. Annie doesn’t consider herself a Talker, even if she was a fan back in the day. But reeling from a recent divorce and dealing with complex feelings about turning 50, Annie throws herself into the distraction of the trip. What she doesn’t expect is to truly connect with the music, the band, the other fans, and herself. As Annie observes, “This was why people turned to religion or watched the Super Bowl at a sports bar instead of alone in their living room. It felt good to be a part of something where your passion was celebrated instead of mocked.” All the Talkers dream of having a special bond with “the guys,” but when Annie actually does meet Keith, a Boy Talk member who’s clearly going through a hard time, she wonders if their connection is real or if she’s just as delusional as the other (mostly) women on the ship. Straub depicts a wonderfully immersive world aboard the American Fantasy, one where each woman assigns herself a favorite guy and everyone is bedecked in Boy Talk merch. For five days, the Talkers live in a fantasy world where the only thing that matters is their connection with a band that meant everything to them so many years ago. As Annie puts it, “Inside her head, which is where she heard the music, it had touched some lever so deep that it couldn’t be reversed…the music was a direct vein to her own childhood, the least complicated part of her life.”
A delightfully nostalgic novel about how the things we loved in the past have the power to shape our future.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9798217046850
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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