A funny, caustic tale of a slacker’s dejected resistance to mainstream success.
A feckless young man struggles with precarious jobs and a general failure to connect in this bleakly comic novel of alienation.
McGrouchpants’ narrative follows his antihero Chris Schuyler’s progress through the 1990s as he moves from his home in Rochester, New York, to college as an English major at the University of Chicago and into a series of dead-end jobs that are the tale’s focus. They include a high school summer job as a lawn mower; a five-and-a-half-year accounting stint that Chris loses when the slot is upgraded to require an MBA; a copy-editing position that ends when he takes too many sick days; a desperate, farcical stab at selling vacuum cleaners; and a gig as a fundraising canvasser in Portland, Oregon, after which he slides toward homelessness. Chris’ story is a bildungsroman in reverse about a peculiarly ’90s brand of eternal adolescence. He’s obsessed with indie rock bands, zines, and avant-garde movies—the title refers to Ang Lee’s art house action flick—as part of his rebellion against the “stultifying suburban” lifestyle his domineering father urges on him. Yet Chris’ lot is eternally stultifying work, infrequently relieved by awkward lurches at romance, with the longed for life of urban hipster intellectualism forever just beyond his reach. Chris’ closed-in, second-person ruminations could have been claustrophobic, but McGrouchpants expands them into a keenly subversive portrait of workplace social psychology, unfolding in long convolutions threaded with scabrous attitude. The result feels a bit like The Office might if David Foster Wallace and William S. Burroughs rewrote the scripts: “Tina, who’s training you, hardly notices that you’re five minutes late (you fell asleep for 40 min. in the front seat, drooling on your steering wheel—you got back from your ‘approved’ dentist appointment early, and put that time to good—if hardly anticipated, or, even, hardly avoidable (as soon as you pulled into the place, you beelined to a spot, and fell down like a ton of bricks) use)—and, instead of remarking on your slight tardiness, with a wave of her hand (‘Ahhh!’) and a practiced, commiserative co-worker grin, buckles down to the task of your 3-hr. block of training.”
A funny, caustic tale of a slacker’s dejected resistance to mainstream success.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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PERSPECTIVES
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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