An intriguing but dense philosophical tale with supernatural elements.
A Japanese teenager in Texas discovers a strange connection to a missing person case in this philosophical novel.
When Japanese exchange student Hanabusa Saichi lands in Texas, he feels every inch a foreigner. Despite his severe anxiety, he’s decided to come to America for his freshman year of high school in hopes that the change of environment will help him break out of his shell. His new temporary home is the city of McKinney, Texas, and the Greenes are his host family: police officer Richard and his wife, Sandra; daughter, Kate; and son, Eric. The suburban charm of McKinney belies the ominous shadow looming over the city: four recent disappearances that the police believe could be the work of a kidnapper. Saichi becomes particularly interested in the case when, during one of his long walks, he discovers a hidden glen of flowers in the nearby forest. The glen not only feels like home in a way that no other place ever has before, but among the flowers Saichi also receives visions—including one regarding the fate of one of the missing people: Lauren Winters. As Saichi grows closer to the Greene children, he becomes increasingly obsessed with the case. Were these kidnappings, murders, or even suicides? When Eric disappears, solving the mystery becomes Saichi’s single concern. He wants to find Eric and protect Kate: “The answer presented itself boldly for him to make into his reason for being; he thought, if I can save Kate and Eric, then I’ll be able to save everyone else, including myself. Every mistake made before could be undone if he could triumph over the darkness of the world here.” Can the secret of the disappearances lead Saichi to the greatest mystery of all: understanding why he’s always felt out of place in the world?
Jordan’s prose is categorized by long, ornate passages deftly describing both the physical setting and Saichi’s psychological state: “Standing there just past the willow leaves he’d parted, Saichi hesitated to step in any further for fear of trampling on any individual member of the beautiful world he’d stumbled upon; to leave his mark in this negative manner would surely tarnish his heart forevermore.” While the premise is a captivating one, the novel turns out to be not a mystery so much as a ruminative exploration of Saichi’s conflicted psyche. The story crawls along at a pace that seems almost engineered to frustrate readers. (The first half-dozen pages are devoted to the last few minutes of Saichi’s flight from Los Angeles to Dallas, during which almost no information about him is given, but three separate announcements by the pilot are included in full.) For all the psychology, there is little recognizable humanity to be found: Even within the claustrophobic Greene household, Saichi feels like a brain floating by itself in a void. The other characters are flat and ghostly. The book is over 300 pages and manages to somehow feel twice that length. In forsaking accessible characters or a compelling story, the author leaves readers few reasons to stick it out to the end.
An intriguing but dense philosophical tale with supernatural elements.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-58-836220-7
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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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