There’s cleverness and craft in abundance here. Also, wisdom and even warmth.
A posthumously published work by a major (if unsung) Black novelist reminds readers of his imaginative brio, verbal ingenuity, and abrasive wit.
In a present day when innovative fiction by African American writers is finding greater acclaim, it’s appropriate that Kelley, who died in 2017 at age 79, should emerge from the relative shadows of cult heroism with this previously unpublished novel. The self-described “2 Novelas & 3 Stories & a Little Play” constituting Dis//Integration make up a shapeshifting biography of Charles “Chig” Dunford, a quasi-autobiographical character who previously appeared in Kelley’s short story collection Dancers on the Shore (1964) and in his novel Dunfords Travels Everywheres (1970). Chig, a highly educated writer and academic, seems to live his life in dreamlike phases, beginning in 1952 when, at 17, he travels south to meet his grandmother Nanny Eva, who enlightens him about the fate of women in the world. Twelve years later, Chig’s in Reupeo (an anagram of Europe), where he becomes protégé to a Hemingway-esque American expatriate writer named John Hoenir, who offers counsel on writing, living, and even sparring. (“You can only go to Heaven if you die fighting. An ambush don’t count.”) The narrative shifts to the “little play” form but not without a short introduction, described as a “dream” and written in a kind of Joycean patois Kelley has deployed in earlier novels. The dramatic narrative that follows seems surreal, too; it takes place in 1965 on a passenger ship where Chig meets and falls in love with Wendy, an enigmatic Black actress passing for white, who breaks his heart, but not before telling him about a hundred Africans chained together in the ship’s lower hold. Mutineers or…slaves? Nobody seems to know. Eventually both the narrative and Chig settle in Vermont, where he teaches English at a small college; looks after Merry, his teenage niece; meets Renka Bravo, a captivating, raven-haired dancer whose cosmopolitan smarts seem to be luring him from lifelong bachelorhood; and engages in some genteel but barbed sparring with Raymond Winograd, his department chair. There’s no use in trying to fashion any kind of logical narrative from these interludes. All you can do is marvel at Kelley’s arresting collagelike portrait of the artist as an intellectual nomad, clinging to the core of what makes him human—and humane.
There’s cleverness and craft in abundance here. Also, wisdom and even warmth.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9780593469934
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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
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