A well-crafted summoning of people living ordinary lives on la frontera, in all their sorrow and splendor.
A suite of stories of life on the U.S.–Mexico border.
“I didn’t believe he was telling the whole truth, but I didn’t question him.” Gilb is a master of stories concerning people who are constantly reinventing themselves, always trying to escape one delicate dilemma or another. Indeed, the title notwithstanding, most of the stories here involve tribulations worthy of Job, if not a few encounters with Delilah, his actors working-class men and women who are running out of options on the hard paths they’ve followed. One, met in passing, is a should-be retiree in Mexico City who finds himself old and without a pension. He sighs, “I never thought....” His interlocutor, a Chicano visitor, says, enigmatically, “I’m lucky...because I didn’t either.” Another, working in a laundry, falls in love with a woman married to a very scary, if momentarily absent, man from across the line. Doubting his self-worth, he recalls how little he has been valued by others: “I didn’t hate school, I especially didn’t hate learning. The main thing they taught me, yelling into my face, was that I was wasting their time and money.” Many of Gilb’s supporting characters have done time; many live in the wake of tragedies of all kinds. These things are matter-of-fact realities, as are dreams of money, fame, even just getting out of town. Gilb’s prose is often a lively Spanglish: “I was la conecta in a big music scene world of marijuanos in Texas, Denver, LA even,” says one dreamer. “This was how mota got to everyone back in the day.” It all makes for a memorable chronicle of people caught between nations, classes, and cultures, all doing their best just to get by.
A well-crafted summoning of people living ordinary lives on la frontera, in all their sorrow and splendor.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780872869318
Page Count: 160
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 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
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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