A sometimes sedate and other times luminous story of rejuvenating love.
An unsought, late-in-life love blossoms between two women in Bohan’s quiet gay romance.
When Ellie Belmont, a 65-year-old retired writing teacher, spots 68-year-old, retired psychotherapist Kathryn Kepler in a Minneapolis Starbucks, she experiences the first twinge of desire she’s felt since the death of her wife, Mary, three years before. Kathryn, whose husband recently divorced her to take up with a younger woman, is straight, but that proves no obstacle to their bonding over tea and dirty chai latte—so simpatico are their personalities and outlooks. Their relationship builds very slowly over lunch dates, shopping excursions—in which Kathryn gives the couture-allergic Ellie a style makeover, although both abjure makeup as being unhealthy and unnecessary—and deep, heart-to-heart talks. Along the way, Ellie introduces Kathryn to her circle of gal pals, and Kathryn feels a growing appreciation for Ellie’s “finely sculpted lips” and “long black lashes.” The narrative kicks up a gear when Kathryn tags along on Ellie’s road trip to her niece’s marijuana farm in California to score some illegal cannabis oil for a friend with Lyme disease, with a stop in Yosemite National Park for sightseeing and snowshoeing; in a hotel room, their brewing attraction finally explodes into rapturous passion. They also pay a visit to Kathryn’s daughter, Jenn, a prickly, insecure woman who’s affronted by the fact that her mother is now dating a woman. A more pressing crisis erupts when Ellie and Kathryn are caught in a multicar highway accident.
Despite this, there’s not much overt drama in most of Bohan’s story of second chances and newfound intimacy, which mainly plays out in long conversations that tend toward serious and even grave matters. There’s much talk of coping with caretaking duties, end-of-life arrangements—“Cremation appeals to me more, even though it consumes fossil fuel”—and assisted living options for seniors; on a spiritual note, Ellie recalls Mary’s numinous presence in the house for a few hours after her passing while Kathryn tells of a dream visitation from a departed friend who told her that death is simply a transition to another plane. Ellie introduces Kathryn to lesbian culture, music, and politics, and they discuss gender roles—including Ellie’s resentful opinions regarding “young butch lesbians…becoming transmen” and trans women identifying as lesbians, which Kathryn challenges. Bohan’s prose is refined and psychologically nuanced, but it sometimes feels bloodless, and the couple’s interactions often lack a spark. However, as their relationship deepens and grows more carnal, so does the author’s writing as she explores the wounds and wisdom that accrue to women of a certain age: “She contemplated the sag in her abdomen that all the crunches in the world would not reduce. The creped neck, the fine hatch work around her eyes and mouth. This is what she had to give to Kathryn, bless her….But one day it would all be empty, just as Mary’s clothes had been, and all this all this wonder would be gone.” When Bohan puts her characters’ love to a harder test, it achieves more resonance.
A sometimes sedate and other times luminous story of rejuvenating love.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-65411-087-1
Page Count: 292
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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