An original, disturbing new version of hospital fiction.
A trainee doctor offers her perspective on her work and its environment, exposing a less-than-sunny view of institutional medical practice.
In an unusual, quiet, but dark debut, DeForest plunges the reader into an unspecified hospital environment, guided by a nameless narrator who is training to be a “future doctor.” This woman introduces a chilling world of dutiful care threaded with incidental horror, inadvertent cruelty, and occasional macabre humor, glimpsed in a variety of contexts: the emergency psych ward; the abortion clinic; the quiet room “where we held the difficult conversations”; neurology; end of life care; and more. The tone can be abstract, musing on poetry or anatomy, at other times, revelatory of medical norms and modes of expression: “Empty speech, the neurologists call it”; “Failing the medication is what we call this.” Slowly the narrator’s personal history emerges: an impoverished childhood, “never seeing doctors”; a religious school with no science or world history; separated parents; visits to her father “in dirty clothing, with head lice, with no clear habits of dental hygiene”; and a string of fearsome stepfathers. Now, in adulthood, she is in a celibate relationship with a seminarian “from a bad-hearted family.” This strange and oppressive context explains some of the oddity of her commentary on her medical training and experience, as does her “fascination with disaster.” Her more political observations on the increased suffering of the poor, the disabled, and people of color are shocking but less unfamiliar. Snapshots of bad behavior by medical personnel—racist comments or derogatory asides about overweight or tattooed patients—seem persuasive. The case of Ada, a patient with slow encephalitis, intersperses the short text and showcases the gamut of process, endurance, loss, and, above all, care and its complex shortcomings.
An original, disturbing new version of hospital fiction.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-38106-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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
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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