An evocative, well-imagined portrayal of late-colonial India through one family’s eyes.
Generations of an Indian family confront personal and political challenges.
In this historical novel, Raman, whose last book was Moments in Transition(2018), follows the Chand family from 1905, when their hometown of Dehradun, along with the rest of India, is firmly under British control, through 1947, when Partition and independence bring a new era to the country. Kishan Chand Das, proprietor of a successful engineering firm, is optimistic in the book’s opening pages, but when his wife dies giving birth to their fourth son, he spirals into depression. With help from his friend and a spiritual retreat, Kishan gets back on track, and he also develops a new commitment to the independence movement. Kishan marries his son Ishaan to Leela, the infant daughter of his best friend. A decade later, the orphaned Leela moves into the Chand house in Dehradun, where she becomes a crucial member of the family. Over the following decades, Ishaan and Leela deal with marital problems, financial struggles, and political turmoil, and their daughter Anita becomes the third generation of the Chand family to drive the book’s story. Raman has an eye for historical detail, like Kishan’s assessment of a train car (“clean symmetrical lines, padded leather seats, side panels adorned with windows...the coach, designed and built by the American Car & Foundry Company, had been his procurement”), and a solid grasp of the real history that shapes the lives of the fictional characters. The writing is strong, and Raman does an excellent job of creating an intimate portrait of a wealthy family that is committed to independence while also financially reliant on the British. The pacing, however, is uneven, though the rushed feeling of some portions is understandable given the book’s sweeping timeline. The ending is somewhat abrupt, and readers may desire a more satisfying resolution to Anita’s storyline. Still, the thoughtful exploration of the experience of colonialism makes the story a rewarding read overall.
An evocative, well-imagined portrayal of late-colonial India through one family’s eyes.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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