A haunting meditation on identity and understanding.
Sometimes, other people can see the secrets hidden right before your eyes.
Bonita, a young Indian woman studying at a language school in Mexico, has a series of unsettling—but ultimately intriguing—encounters with a stranger she meets in a park. Vicky, a flamboyant older woman prone to festive and traditional Mexican attire, insists that Bonita must be the daughter of her lost friend, “Rosarita,” another young Indian woman who had traveled to San Miguel many years before to study art. After initially rebuffing Vicky’s claims as outlandish, Bonita embarks on a series of reconnaissance missions, around San Miguel and onwards to Colima and the bay at La Manzanilla, in an effort to discern if there was any truth to Vicky’s accounts. Forced to make sense of several shadowy aspects of her now-deceased mother’s life story, Bonita comes to refer to Vicky herself as “the Trickster” as her confusion about her mother’s past grows. As Bonita reassesses the circumstances of her own earlier life, she comes to view some details through a more critical lens: Who was the artist behind the sketch hanging unremarked upon on the wall of her childhood bedroom, for example? Desai’s subtle exploration of memory, identity, and thwarted aspirations has a ghostly, haunted quality to it (and veers into gothic territory during a visit to Vicky’s ancestral home). This atmospheric and eerie novella is delivered in the second-person voice, adding to the sense of distance between Bonita and the truth and to an ambivalence about the identity of the coolly detached narrator. Desai honors the parallels between art inspired by the Mexican Revolution and the Indian Partition in this tantalizing story of Bonita’s attempt to reconcile layer upon layer of a family’s history.
A haunting meditation on identity and understanding.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781668082430
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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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