This beautifully written debut lands in the middle of a debate about representation in American literature.
A picaresque romance set in contemporary Haiti.
Zo is a child when a professor tells him that, as a penniless orphan in the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, he might be “the poorest man in the Western world.” Zo is certainly poor, but he is enterprising, willing to do any work that pays. Eventually, he discovers that his capacity to divine what women need is, perhaps, his truest vocation. He’s working a construction job when he gets his first glimpse of his employer’s daughter. What follows is a story of star-crossed romance threatened by class and—eventually—the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010. Miller’s writing is vivid and engaging, filled with richly imagined scenes and fully formed characters. Zo is an easy protagonist to root for, and Anaya makes for a pleasingly complex foil and partner. She is a real, contemporary woman while Zo—a poor orphan who grows into a man of prodigious strength and sexual prowess—is like a figure from legend. The knowledge that Miller is a white man from the United States writing about black people in Haiti may affect how some readers react to this novel. The depiction of Zo as a spectacular physical specimen—an indefatigable lover and superhuman laborer—becomes complicated when framed within the history of white people talking about black bodies. In a lengthy author’s note, Miller explains that he became acquainted with Haiti when he traveled there to work as an EMT in the aftermath of the earthquake he writes about. He thanks numerous Haitians he got to know at that time. He asserts that he “is not a Haiti expert” while praising Haitian authors. The fact remains that Miller is a white man from the United States writing about black people in Haiti at a moment when authors, readers, publishers, and critics are talking about who should tell whose stories—and, just as importantly, who gets generous advances and the prestige of publishing with legacy houses. To the extent that this novel gains critical and popular attention, this is almost certainly going to be a factor in its reception.
This beautifully written debut lands in the middle of a debate about representation in American literature.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-101-87412-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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 tart meditation on narrative and integrity.
A writer’s meeting with his mentor goes complicatedly awry.
Lerner’s slim fourth novel opens with an unnamed narrator arriving in Providence, Rhode Island, on a magazine assignment to interview Thomas, a professor who’s “among the world’s most renowned thinkers about art and technology.” Just before leaving his hotel, though, he accidentally knocks his phone in a sink, bricking it. His sole means of recording the interview gone, he triages, suggesting that he and Thomas conduct a pre-interview that evening and do a full-dress conversation the next day, after he can get the device fixed. The setup seems thin, but, this being a Lerner novel, rich ethical and philosophical questions fly off it: He’s concerned with the ways that an interview poisons authentic conversation, with our over-reliance on technology, and the moral dilemmas of talking to an unreliable source. (Thomas, 90, seems distracted and sometimes dotty.) Lerner’s true subject isn’t an interview so much as it is misapprehension and miscommunication; after the meeting with Thomas in the first section, the second and third parts are concerned with characters’ failures to understand something about each other, be it a romantic partner’s wishes or a child’s eating disorder. That last challenge makes for some of the most vivid, offbeat, and affecting writing Lerner has delivered—a surprise, given his fiction is typically marked by DeLillo-esque sangfroid. Another surprise is the relative embrace of a conventional story arc, as the narrator faces a reckoning about living in a “deepfake” world. This is slighter fare for Lerner but surprisingly potent given its length, interested in the ways that we manufacture our identities and how technology speeds the process along.
A tart meditation on narrative and integrity.Pub Date: April 7, 2026
ISBN: 9780374618599
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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