The Great American Pandemic Novel only Shteyngart could write, full of hyphenated identities, killer prose, and wild...
The Levin-Senderovskys—Sasha, Masha, and little Natasha—wait out the virus at their country estate with four close friends and one movie star.
One of Sasha Senderovsky's fondest memories of his childhood is the bungalow colony catering to Russian immigrant families where he first met his wife, Masha. With the proceeds of his once-successful writing career, he has built a colony of his own, though it's in an area of New York state where a deconstructed swastika is becoming a popular bumper sticker, and he's having trouble scraping together the cash to get the dead tree limbs out of the driveway before the party starts. Karen Cho and Vinod Mehta have been his best friends since high school. She's stratospherically rich after creating an app that makes people fall in love; he's failed at everything except being a very good person and loving Karen ceaselessly from afar. They are joined by Karen's distant cousin, an international dandy named Ed; Senderovsky's beautiful former student Dee, who leverages her Southern drawl and heritage to great effect on and off the page; and someone known only as the Actor, whose fame, charisma, and good looks are almost beyond description. Except Shteyngart, most recently of the fantastic Lake Success(2018) and most famously of Super Sad True Love Story (2010), can describe anything. Russian: "a language built around the exhalation of warmth and pain." Cheeses: "so filled with aromatic herbs they inspired (on Senderovsky's part) memories that had never happened." One could go on. When the curtain rises on the House on the Hill, as the place is known, it's early March 2020; Senderovsky has to ask his guests to refrain from hugging because "Masha's gone all epidemiological." Everyone seems to gather that they'll be staying for a while, but, of course, they have no idea. Uncle Vanya, K-pop, and Japanese reality TV will all play important roles, and just about everyone gets to fall in love.
The Great American Pandemic Novel only Shteyngart could write, full of hyphenated identities, killer prose, and wild vitality.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984855-12-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
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 debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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