A violent and gruesome poetry collection with occasional, brief moments of vulnerability.
Frank offers a grisly poetry collection about human mishaps.
The poet explores tragedy and absurdity through graphic and darkly humorous vignettes. Each poem is a self-contained story of misfortune in which characters suffer the consequences of their actions or simply experience bad luck. Frank sets the stage with “The Lilies of the Field,” a poem set in an office in a sketchy part of a town called Heaven where bureaucrats at the Deputation Office of Human Follies manage humanity’s “foibles, flops, fantods and Fate.” In “Tony Island, Professional Cuddler,” the title character—whose advanced techniques include “the Hong Kong Noodle” and “the Flying Anus”—takes umbrage with a negative online review accusing him of strangulation. A 48-year-old divorcée, Carol Venison, has a graphic paragliding mishap in “Nude on a Crane,” “killing, among others, a Gliding Survivors Support Group.” Similarly, a man is hit by a self-driving car and dragged through a clothing store, where his “cock was torn off,” in “The Numinous Future of Autonomous Delights,” and another man inadvertently destroys a produce department after being shot out of a waterslide, over the highway, and into a grocery store in “Tragōidía at Orcus Bottoms Efficiency Apartments.” The book concludes with “Ballade of an Agelast,” a meditation on the meaninglessness of life by a speaker planning to observe another of the town’s regular executions.
For the most part, Frank effectively uses dark humor to trigger existential dread in these unique and unsettling poems. At their best, they include wildly creative and subtly satirical scenarios, such as an unpopular scientist getting mauled by his co-workers’ pets on his lunch break in “Bring Your Pet to Work Day” at a nuclear reactor, accidentally triggering a catastrophic meltdown (“The Happy Rainbow Nuclear Disaster”). The poet grimly captures human hypocrisy in lines such as “When something terrible happens to someone you love or you, / it’s a tragedy. But in Human Nature’s exuberant derangement, / when it happens to someone else, it’s entertainment” (“Dr. Ingie Potts, Professor of Human Nature”). That said, the poems are unapologetically crude, and include frequent mentions of blood, vomit, flatulence, ejaculation, and excrement. The mishap accounts are unabashedly vulgar, as in “The Death of the Longevity Expert,” in which an “Oompah Band” in a mall tramples a man’s testicles before “his legs and part of his ass were flung / into the screaming nubiles of Forever 21.” The collection’s unrelentingly dark and cynical tone, in lines such as “Heaven and Hell are against us, and we contend / with the slavery of our personal stupidity” (“Bale and Beauty By All Human Lights”), will wear on readers. However, Frank also shows that he’s clearly capable of more than shock value; some characters are beautifully detailed, affecting creations, such as a man who lives a “quiet, faraway life alone / with my goldfish, hummels and slide trombone / and a small library with a long bookcase // shelved with puzzles rather than books.”
A violent and gruesome poetry collection with occasional, brief moments of vulnerability.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798987782453
Page Count: 62
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025
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
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.
With only a month left until the world ends due to a swiftly approaching black hole, Don and Rodney, a retired gay couple, road-trip from Maine to Washington to spend their final days with their son.
After reports that a planet-swallowing black hole is making its way toward Earth, Rodney and Don—who have been together for 40 years and survived everything from homophobia to the HIV crisis—decide to pack their belongings into an RV, say goodbye to their neighbors, and travel from Camden, Maine, to Washington to uphold a promise to spend their final days with their son. They can’t wait any longer, since there’s already chaos around the country: “Military vehicles in the streets of most cities and towns. Looting, rioting, the burning of cars and buildings and people, all of it had already happened.” As they make their way west across the country, they encounter fellow travelers ranging from close-knit families to free-spirited hippies, some of whom have come to terms with the impending end of the world and others who haven’t. While the story seems to be asking readers what they would do if they had 30 days left to live, and reflects on what different kinds of acceptance might look like in the face of unavoidable tragedy, it loses some of its poignancy in a series of thinly padded monologues about the meaning of life. Clearly intended to pack an emotional punch, it’s failed by an abrupt ending, and the way the journey’s mystery—which will be obvious to many readers—is revealed by an info dump in the last chapter.
An existential crisis that steps on its own final moments.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781250881236
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
