A comic interrogation of manhood set in a nearly man-free apocalypse.
A nerd discovers he may be the only man to have survived a deadly plague in Dargitz’s debut satirical novel.
Twenty-two-year-old Fletcher Sinclair was never a prime specimen of masculinity—he was an introverted community college student with thick glasses, greasy hair, and a love of video games and energy drinks. Then a super-virus literally wiped out every other man on earth, leaving Fletcher the lone surviving example of manhood. After spending months in isolation following the deaths of his parents and brother, Fletcher is rescued from his house by a small group of female doctors who have been laboring to understand why the “Delilah” virus only targets men—a study that requires, of course, a living male subject. Fletcher provides them with bodily fluid samples, and he agrees to stay hidden at their compound so as to not become a target of the raiders, cultists, and other bad actors roaming the post-pandemic female wasteland. At first, it’s great to have some company, but after weeks of doing little more than rewatching Sleepless in Seattle in his hospital room, Fletcher begins to feel a bit coddled. He begins to wonder: Shouldn’t the last man on earth act a little more…manly? When violence strikes the hospital, Fletcher is forced to learn the hard way that being the last surviving man requires an unpleasant amount of surviving. The author’s comedic prose flows easily, managing to sneak in quite a bit of his character’s traumatized psychology: “[Fletcher] had developed a nice little defense mechanism during his isolation that acted as a firewall to most forms of sentimentality. When an apocalypse is at your door, wallowing is an indulgence you simply can’t afford. Because wallowing is just one little hop away from giving up…” The book is far too long, but the length does give Dargitz ample space to move beyond the sitcom-like premise and explore some deeper issues related to the concept of masculinity, in a narrative more timely than it may seem.
A comic interrogation of manhood set in a nearly man-free apocalypse.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Edderkoppen Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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
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