A harrowingly beautiful exploration of unrequited love and the fallout of single-minded devotion.
In three different incarnations, Eve is given the chance to “get it right” in a familiar struggle between vocation, marriage, and motherhood.
Eve is a devoted mother, a wife, and a painter. Or rather, she’s all three but can only be fully devoted to one at a time. In this three-part novel, we experience three possible paths for Eve; Rosewood weighs each version like a chemist, precisely and intentionally changing the size of three variables in Eve's life: her son, Blue; her husband, Liam; and her best friend, Pari, the sole subject of Eve's portraits. As a mother, Eve is negligent and intellectually unfulfilled. When her son accidentally drowns, she is completely subsumed by his phantom, losing her husband in the process. As an artist, Eve is a portrait of hesitation, unable to act on her desires for anything beyond her work. In the last section, the only one where Eve and Liam’s relationship has any longevity, we know it is at the cost of motherhood and vocation. Across these alternate realities, Rosewood explores the cost of love, the notion that complete devotion to any one thing creates an unfulfilled life. Using visual art and the artistic vocation as a metaphor for writing is a familiar trope; where Rosewood stands out is in her unromantic meditation on the grotesque in beauty. The three parts of the novel act as reincarnations: three opportunities for characters to grow and reform themselves. Anything that remains static here is not immortal but corpselike. Pari's beauty, obsessively recorded in each of Eve's paintings, becomes like the sculpture Eve makes of her dead son—creepy. While the novel sometimes feels overly self-conscious, Rosewood's haunting prose and the moments when the three alternate universes bump up against each other are delightful. Just a shadow exists on the page, but a way to reconcile Eve’s three identities hovers just out of reach, for the reader to create in their own life.
A harrowingly beautiful exploration of unrequited love and the fallout of single-minded devotion.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68283-137-3
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Texas Tech Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
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
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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