A brash and well-turned coming-of-age tale.
A young man has an emotional and sexual awakening through a fellow troubled teen.
Thompson’s debut is narrated by Theron, who at 15 is forced to shuttle between the East and West coasts after his parents’ divorce. Spending a summer with his tough-as-nails dad in New Hampshire, he brings along a bag of pot brownies to cope; when dad finds it, Theron is made to work at a hardware store. But his ostensible boss is 17-year-old Jake, a fellow stoner and aspiring musician who recognizes that the store is a tax write-off and runs things lazily when he’s not robbing the till. So ensues “a kind of permanent hang,” with the two bonding over heavy metal, weed, and hard-to-articulate sexual feelings. Thompson writes beautifully and with a sense of tension about having nothing to do—no simple trick. And he’s graceful when considering young male insecurity and self-loathing. (“He was beautiful. I was a brace-faced gremlin with boy tits and stalagmites of cystic acne ridging my cheeks.”) Over time, this dirtbag Call Me by Your Name turns more perilous and gloomy. Jake is prone to vehicular calamities, and though Theron gets older, attending college and pursuing a relationship with a woman, he’s not much wiser. A reconnection with Jake becomes a boozy, druggy push-and-pull as he sorts out his feelings, and poor choices and insecure selfishness abound. (“I wanted to control both of them. I wanted them both to give me their focus.”) Yet Theron remains a sympathetic character, and Thompson recognizes that though sexual identity doesn’t always arrive like a thunderbolt, or settle into simple definitions, the process can be all-consuming. The arc of the story’s plot is largely tragic, but the mood is bighearted, revealing the power of the first flush of romantic and erotic connection.
A brash and well-turned coming-of-age tale.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593656563
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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