An unsparing critique of Brazil’s young elites.
Thirty-something Vivian must confront the uncomfortable fact of her enormous privilege.
Vivian lives in an apartment in Rio de Janeiro, bought by her parents for her 30th birthday, which is decorated with designer furniture and prints from a series showing at the local art museum. She’s a freelance curator, one who can afford to take resume-boosting jobs—when money’s tight, she rents out her apartment and moves back into one of her family’s four properties. In her free time, she goes to raves and snorts cocaine with her friends, all of whom are part of Brazil’s cultural elite. Vivian operates in such a rarified realm that she’s been taught she is upper-middle-class—the true upper echelon, in her eyes, have their own private planes. This self-perception is at once deluded and not inaccurate, creating “a sense of inferiority that is very specific, kind of comic and also kinda sad.” One night, as Vivian and friends are in line for a rave, police attack two street vendors, one of whom usually works on Vivian’s street and from whom she often buys beer. Vivian and her friends flee the violence by entering the rave venue; much later, she learns that the vendor, Darlene, has died from a head wound, presumably inflicted by the police that night. Vivian is not a total stranger to dark and unpleasant feelings—she’s been heavily medicated for mental illness since the age of 10—but this violence, so abrupt and so close in proximity, needles her. But can it shock her out of the cocoon of her own privilege? Drummond’s narrative voice is fiercely honest, coolly cynical, and sharply scathing: “What was I supposed to feel: Grief, guilt, indifference, sadness? It was like I’d entered a new environment whose codes I didn’t properly know, and I was supposed to understand, intuitively, how to behave and act in the moment, based on that understanding.” Vivian is not an especially appealing character; and yet, remarkably, Drummond manages to elicit readers’ empathy for her, mining her most fundamental and human flaws and insecurities.
An unsparing critique of Brazil’s young elites.Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9780374611286
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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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