A beguiling and luminous tale of loss and hope.
In Williams’ novel, a young girl’s personae shift as the tensions of a small town are revealed.
The story centers on the Appalachian town of Summerton and a 9-year-old girl named Henrietta Moon, who appears in starkly different guises in loosely interwoven plotlines. Readers first meet her as a fourth grader at Neil Armstrong Elementary School, where she dreams of becoming the first woman to land on the moon and designs a rocket booster to take her there. While volunteering at a retirement home, she bonds with 86-year-old Gerald Harris over their love of space flight. A second storyline probes Summerton’s darker side through the perspective of Henry, a writer whose bestselling novel Mountain Holler explores the decaying town’s criminal underworld; he ponders the town’s fraught history after racists burn a cross on the lawn of the Black provost of a nearby university. In this storyline, Henrietta is Henry’s infant daughter and dies two days after her birth, pitching the writer into a spiral of anger and despair. Henrietta is then reimagined by Robert Montgomery, a lonely widower who mourns at her graveside and then writes a graphic novel for kids—included here, complete with Clarke’s vivid full-color cartoon illustrations. It depicts her as a socially awkward schoolgirl whose parents suggest that she slow down and savor life. In Henrietta’s intertwining plotlines, Williams delves into themes of innocence and ambition, unhinged grief, continuity, and remembrance. His prose is supple and as changeable as Henrietta herself, shifting from dreamy lyricism (“if he stared at the moon long enough and he let his eyes relax just so, the moon blurred and transformed from a light in the sky, a satellite, into a hole—a hole in the darkness through to something brighter”) to gritty realism full of evocative details: “The flames were lipping higher than his roof. The crackle and snapping sounds made him nauseous. Like breaking bones or the crack of a whip.” The result is a captivating read that’s poignant and magical.
A beguiling and luminous tale of loss and hope.Pub Date: June 17, 2023
ISBN: 9798830898652
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
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
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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