This distinctive debut introduces a wickedly weird new talent.
If Shirley Jackson moved The Addams Family to the English countryside, something like this dark, tongue-in-cheek epic might result.
“Welcome to Thornwalk, home of the last of the Wynford Gilberts—Lydia, Hugo, Annabel, Jeremy, and Rosalind.” Tomaski’s archly but deeply gothic debut is presented in the form of a house tour, conducted by an enigmatic man named Maximus, eventually revealed to have played a role in the events. His tour consists of 70 short chapters, each of which explains the provenance of some blemish or irregularity in the family mansion, now empty and about to be converted into a hotel. From “The Bolt on the Blue-room Door” and “The Burn on the Library Rug” to “The Missing Model Ship” and “A Squashed Blackcurrant,” each stop on the tour has a backstory. “Come through, come through,” he urges us, “climb the staircase,” directing our progress through the house and its grounds and outbuildings, gradually filling in the outlines of the family’s miserably unhappy history from the 1920s to the early 2000s. His butler-ish voice (though he was not their butler) and his undimmed reverence for the five damaged siblings—madness, narcissism, kleptomania, violence, and a wide variety of other dysfunctional traits run in the family—set the non-judgmental tone of the revelations. A favorite character is the middle child, Annabel, who, despite being kept out of society and drugged daily to control what seems like epilepsy, is arguably the most normal of the bunch. Indeed, Wes Anderson might have a field day with the Gilberts and their storied ruins. “How well I have managed this,” the narrator reassures himself midway through. “It is almost in order and beginning to form quite a coherent little story.” Readers with a penchant for elegant horror played for comedy will likely agree, though toward the end, the narrative lingers for quite a while on an abusive domestic relationship, and one wishes to head to the gift shop.
This distinctive debut introduces a wickedly weird new talent.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9781668094648
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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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