Not Hurston at her best, though completists will certainly take interest in her story.
A long-lost manuscript from the pioneering folklorist, anthropologist, and student of Black history.
Following on Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939), Hurston spent years studying the life of Herod the Great, the famed Jewish leader. Her editor rejected the resulting book, which wound up in a trunk and then, following her death, in flames—the trunk burned by a crew hired to clear out her house—and miraculously rescued by a passing sheriff’s deputy who knew she was a writer. Hurston had two apparent purposes: She wished to chronicle “the 3,000 years struggle of the Jewish people for democracy and the rights of man,” and she saw in Herod’s alliance with Rome a metaphor for the Cold War struggle between Russia and the United States. While many ancient sources portray Herod as a tyrant, anticipating the fiercer denunciation of his son as the scourge of both Jesus Christ and John the Baptist, Hurston builds on other accounts; in particular, she rejects the charge that a monstrous Herod ordered “the massacre of the innocents,” instead insisting that “he was beloved by the nation.” The Herod of her story is a smolderingly handsome man suitable for a romance novel, which earns him the attention of a lustful and decidedly bad Mariamne, who repaid his blandishments by plotting his death, bringing it instead on herself: “Mariamne was dead. Dead. Never to burn away annoyances with her hot, soft body.” Hurston sometimes writes with a kind of high-gothic-romance seriousness (“My own father is at fault for beseeching Caesar to reinstate this treacherous Hyrcanus in the priesthood”), mixing in charming if perhaps not quite appropriate Southernisms (“Cleopatra knew more ways to kill a cat besides choking it to death on butter”). Altogether, the manuscript, while an interesting historical document, lacks the polish of Hurston’s classic books, such as Dust Tracks on a Road and Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Not Hurston at her best, though completists will certainly take interest in her story.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063161009
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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
SEEN & HEARD
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