Lowry’s novel offers humor, sharp social commentary, startling twists, and a satisfying conclusion.
In Lowry’s novel, a repressed politician’s wife finds unexpected strength in the story of her long-lost great-great-aunt.
When Rachel Jackson’s mother passes on to her an heirloom—a small blue trunk that belonged to her “crazy” great-great aunt Marit, who was never spoken of by her family—going through the old papers within it to learn more about Marit seems like a pleasant distraction. Why do the contents include a napkin from a notorious speakeasy, a hank of horsehair, and a news clipping about gangsters? Rachel is secretly miserable, despite her privileged life. Her husband Blake, a conservative Arizona congressman, is running for reelection, and she feels stifled playing the part of perfect political wife. Her situation further darkens when she accidentally finds a woman’s scarf—not her own—in Blake’s computer bag while looking for a rubber band. The narrative shifts: Carrying all her worldly possessions in a blue trunk, Marit Sletmo emigrates from Norway to Wisconsin with her older brother Jorgan and sister Ingrid in 1904 as a naive 17-year-old. Jorgan, her legal guardian, plans to marry her off to a self-absorbed, rich older man to fund his own ambitions. When her budding friendship with an unconventional older woman causes her fiance to break their engagement, Jorgan has her declared insane (and in a time when almost anything could be diagnosed as “hysteria,” that’s appallingly easy to do). He fears that Marit might reveal a damaging secret about him. (“We have decided you should go away…we think it’s the best thing for you.”) The perspective shifts between Rachel’s first-person point of view and Marit’s close third person, an effective way of highlighting the immediacy of the present and the distance of the past. Both women are compelling, sympathetic, and memorable characters. Their interwoven stories reveal unexpected parallels between their very different lives and personalities as each finds the inner strength needed to break free from captivity—Rachel figuratively and Marit literally. Inspired in part by the life of the author’s own ancestor, Marit’s tale will resonate long after readers finish the book.
Lowry’s novel offers humor, sharp social commentary, startling twists, and a satisfying conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9798888244418
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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