Lively, sexy, and funny, with an actual quest for meaning at its core.
The tailspin created by a bad review in the New York Times sends an author into the arms of Ayn Rand.
Filled with gleeful and often politically incorrect humor (one running joke revolves around the idea that only gay men wear Hugo Boss underwear), Freiman's sophomore effort kicks off as our narrator, Anna, is trying to recover from having her satire of the opioid epidemic labeled “classist” by the paper of record. But, as she explains in her own defense, there can be empathy in satire: “Jokes cared, just in a different way. They were a natural and necessary thinking-through-of-things. A thinking that had to go barreling straight through consensus to see what was on the other side. Even if that thing was just laughter. Just the useful acknowledgment that things were never solely good or bad; sometimes they were also, mercifully, funny.” Useful insights like this play a gonzo game of tennis with absurd and hilarious plot twists—for example, during an encounter with a group of “sexagenarian beanie babies” touring Ayn Rand's New York, Anna learns that Rand's first book was also savaged by the Times. While Anna had previously considered Rand “the gateway drug for bad husbands to quit their jobs and start online stock trading,” she now discovers that she and Alisa Rosenbaum (Rand's real name) have much in common. “In 1917, the Bolsheviks had seized her father’s pharmacy and twelve-year-old Ayn had stood by impotently, witnessing his humiliation. Here, I saw a parallel with my own father—the hard-working orthodontist—where the Bolsheviks were his two fourteen-year-old daughters, my half sisters, who mocked him relentlessly for being bourgeois and accidentally misgendering their friends.” If you like this, you’ll love Anna's move to Los Angeles to script a TV show about her new muse; her affair with a content creator she calls Big Boy, who gives her an animal avatar, Ayn Ram; her pilgrimage to a retreat center in Greece that she characterizes as “Eat Pray Love narrated by Humbert Humbert.” Or, perhaps, Ottessa Moshfegh.
Lively, sexy, and funny, with an actual quest for meaning at its core.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781646221929
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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