A deeply intelligent examination of the ties that both define and bind our lives.
A reimagining of The Brothers Karamazov with three Korean American sisters in the titular roles.
Minah, Sarah, and Esther Kim are raised under the shadow of their father Eugene’s extreme cruelty. The eldest, Minah, was born to a different mother than the younger two, but she’s raised alongside them under the insufficient care of their terminally ill mother, Jeonghee, while the girls’ father uses her as a target for his frequent rages. After Jeonghee’s death, Minah distances herself from her family and eventually becomes a successful lawyer who “feel[s] most spiritual" when putting on makeup or new clothes. Minah plans to extend the sensual joy she takes in the world to the experience of having children and is bending her will toward finding a man who will enable these future plans. Sarah, the middle child and her father’s favorite, is brilliant, an Ivy League graduate who finds herself cynically alienated from a society she sees as filled with “suffering and sadism and selfishness.” Alone of the sisters, Esther has drifted out into the world without a plan to govern her future decisions, and yet has managed to keep an essential compassion for humanity, including her increasingly abusive father, even through the deprivations of her wanderings. The sisters lose touch as adults, but they’re brought back into daily contact when Eugene announces not only that he’s dying, but that the Sisters K have a long-lost illegitimate brother whom they must factor into their plans for their eventual inheritance. As the sisters negotiate their philosophical views on pleasure and suffering, rage and shame, duty and freely given love, Sun patiently translates the core values of Dostoevsky’s timeless work into the idioms of late capitalism, where the sisters’ available identities are refracted through the prism of not one but two paternalistic societies—Korean and American. The result is a book that does far more than retell a classic tale: it constructs a whole new vocabulary to discuss the most central of human conundrums: how to love and be loved in return.
A deeply intelligent examination of the ties that both define and bind our lives.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 9781961884069
Page Count: 393
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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