Some of these short forays show real promise while others lamentably veer into the didactic.
Ten short stories convey the mixture of longing, duty, and general precarity that characterizes modern life.
Holtzman, who wrote The Bethune Murals (2018), writes in a pleasingly restrained, surrealist mode in the titular tale, which satirizes how the pharmaceutical industry generates profit by treating even the most benign human foibles. The author’s characters often hope to challenge capitalist structures but are flawed in their pursuit, such as Marvin in “The Umbrella,” who compares himself unfavorably to a hardscrabble acquaintance: “He had…given money to progressive causes, but it was fluff compared to Leslie’s existential involvement with capitalism.” “The Boyfriend” recalls classics such as Gabriel García Márquez’s 1992 story “Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane” in the way its elderly protagonist, Jeff, harbors an unrequited yearning for a younger woman, but Holtzman fails to bring poignancy to its conclusion. “Brahms’ Fourth Symphony” is an engrossing story that occasionally features a lyrical voice, as when Joan, the protagonist, reflects, “Around a curve in the road, my headlights caught the trees laced with snow. How evanescent, I thought sadly. By morning, the wind will have left nothing but skeletal branches.” “A Cascading Failure,” however, is itself one—a concatenating series of unrealistic and apocalyptic predictions linked by a thin, unbelievable plot. Game theory’s intersection with romance is Holtzman’s material in “Only a Game,” a narrative rife with the kinds of entanglements that one typically finds in a campus novel. Throughout the collection, Holtzman flirts with moralism, and he addresses this tendency in the book’s introduction: “Unlike writers who dismiss making points as propaganda, I don’t think it a sin to expose my own beliefs….[I]f they get you angry, that’s great.” One can see this most clearly in “Last Days of Summer” and “See Jane Run”—two uninspiring attempts to address post-2016 political polarization in the United States. Likewise, “A Foot in the Door” is an unnecessary, tone-deaf #MeToo story written from a male abuser’s point of view.
Some of these short forays show real promise while others lamentably veer into the didactic.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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