A well-crafted spiral of a story with hope at its center.
After a mental health crisis, a young woman seeks treatment in an attempt to reinhabit the outside world, and herself, again.
Norma is 27 years old, unhappy, anxious, desperate to break up with her girlfriend, and not totally convinced that the world around her is real. But what she really needs, she insists to her new therapist, is to finish her manuscript. Norma’s refrain continues as she meets with her therapist twice a week, panicking about climate change, skewering famous billionaires, and occasionally revealing a glimpse of her childhood. Interspersed with their therapy sessions are Norma’s stories, which she emphasizes are fiction. Although the stories are nearly identical to her life, this distinction is crucial to Norma. To Norma, life is a story, everyone is a character, and reality is a concept that cannot be defined by something as flimsy as genre. “When I was stuck in oblivion,” she tells her therapist, “my head used the second person a lot. As if the author was whispering secrets to the character, and the author and the character had the same voice so it was hard to distinguish one from the other.” As Norma navigates her relationship, her mental health crisis, and her manuscript, she works toward believing her therapist’s words: “You Can Get Better.” This portrait of mundanity is scattered with memento mori that plead to be noticed. There are times when Saab leans too heavily on her narrative devices, and the meta nods and storytelling stunts struggle to support the work as a whole. Still, Norma is acerbic, tenderhearted, and clever. The majority of the novel takes place in her mind, and it’s as fascinating a setting as any other.
A well-crafted spiral of a story with hope at its center.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780593686782
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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