A brave and affecting story of resilience.
In bin Vilio’s novel, three Black women encounter spirits during a road trip just before the nation descends into chaos.
Ida Bridges and her friends Soweto and Abeni have come of age in a racist America, struggling to assert their identities. Ida was found as a baby amid the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and she was adopted by a white mother and a Black father. Her skin is affected by vitiligo, and she lost her hearing during the storm. Years later, when Ida is in college, her mother gives her and her friends a copy of the Safe Negro Travel Guide, which assisted Black travelers in the Jim Crow–era South, and she urges them to take a road trip of their own. As the journey unfolds, ghostly apparitions of men and women greet the young women with the words “Black, Girl, Chosen” in Black American Sign Language. When the friends’ lives are in danger, these same mysterious figures rescue them; soon, the trio realize that Ida is the “Chosen” one. Meanwhile, as the apparitions appear to other Black men and women throughout the country, law enforcement starts rounding people up and quarantining them with alleged “acute African psychosis syndrome.” This compelling and unpredictable novel features strong characters and a nuanced presentation of modern racial discrimination. Bin Vilio guides readers through an alternate America in which the victims of oppression effectively make their presence known, rising from the water in a powerful symbol of both birth and erasure. Readers will find this work informative and haunting as it speaks to the power of remembering the past and hearing its plea for a true and enduring justice.
A brave and affecting story of resilience.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9798822941434
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Vivid characters are set adrift in a “ripped from the headlines” tableau that complicates the story, and the storytelling.
A diverting midlife story plucks at the secrets good people carry to the grave.
As a reader, Artie Dam—the protagonist of Strout’s 11th book—encounters Olive Kitteridge, “a crotchety old woman from Maine” and Strout’s most celebrated fictional character. Artie picked up the Pulitzer-anointed book centered on Olive after his wife, Evie, loved it, “oh, years ago now.” Strout is having a bit of fun—that “oh” is a trademark—even though she marbles her latest novel with marital infidelity, political anxiety, and suicide. Indeed, it is the fact that Olive’s father died by suicide that Artie, 57 and gaining a paunch, recalls now in his own dismalness. As the story begins, he is pondering the most discreet way to die, despite having been Massachusetts’ Teacher of the Year five years earlier. Artie seems the inverse of irascible Olive: beloved by his students; by his grown son, Rob; and by the English teacher, Anne, who quietly pines for him. But like Olive, Artie has distressing impulses—he steals a comb, then some expensive shirts. Much of the text bobs along on Artie’s stocktaking memories, chunked out in short, occasionally abrupt paragraphs. Strout’s storytelling is thinning a bit, like middle-aged hair. Then, midbook, she clobbers Artie with a brutal existential shock. In its wake, Strout surfs the nature of loneliness, corrosive secrets, and the convulsions of the 2024 presidential election. Hers is an unremittingly Blue State book, although Artie has one friend who, unbeknownst to him, supported Donald Trump. On the day after the election, Artie somberly concludes that his “country was committing suicide.” This is the first novel in which Strout entirely vacates Maine for another setting. But she sticks with Artie and, on the final pages, delivers him a satisfying finale.
Vivid characters are set adrift in a “ripped from the headlines” tableau that complicates the story, and the storytelling.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9798217154746
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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