A sensitive and sensual story of renewal that’s hampered somewhat by overexplanation.
Probst’s novel follows a career photographer as she revives her artistic and romantic passions in Iceland.
Cathryn McAllister, an American single mother of two grown children, has long sacrificed her art for the security of commercial photography and catered to her kids’ every whim. In dire need of a break, she seizes upon the opportunity to shoot a spread of photographs in the stunning Icelandic landscape, both as a crown jewel to her portfolio and as a chance to take some time for herself. She doesn’t expect to fall in love with the subject of her photos, the alluring glass blower Henry Malcolm “Mack” Charbonneau, but she soon finds herself abandoning her preplanned itinerary for the cramped, steamy quarters of a glass blowing hot shop in Akureyri. The heat of their mutual desire is tempered by Mack’s strange reticence to let Cathryn know him. She offers as little of her past as he does his, and the two exist in a liminal space of artistic exploration and intimate passion, untethered by the ties that bind them to their daily lives. Yet readers will feel the weight of Cathryn’s life pressing in, as each of her children calls in turn to complain of minute yet personally monumental crises. As her relationship with Mack unfolds, Cathryn realizes her own agency, suppressed for so long along with the traumas of her late husband’s infidelity and untimely death. Probst grapples with questions of the essence of art and the possibility of redemption in this novel and conveys some gorgeous and potent images along the way. However, some passages suffer from overwriting. For example, Mack’s stirring observation on glass blowing (“After all, what other art form requires the breath of its creator?”) is undercut by Cathryn’s gratuitous response (“That’s an extraordinary way to put it”). Metaphors and symbols are also laid bare and dissected. The author has a keen skill at crafting nuanced and textured relationships, but she brings less grace to the construction of the plot. Still, she delivers an often engaging narrative with an ending you won’t expect.
A sensitive and sensual story of renewal that’s hampered somewhat by overexplanation.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64742-259-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 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
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