An engrossing, soulful story of people working their way toward redemption.
A Jewish family copes with illness, lawsuits, and the spiritual legacy of the Holocaust in Berger’s latest novel in a family saga.
This fourth novel in this series unfolds in 1991 with the Greek American Jewish Covo clan settled in the New York City area and beset with ethical quandaries. Psychiatrist Nicky Covo faces a malpractice lawsuit alleging deliberate neglect of a patient who died by suicide—a charge that Nicky is almost certain is baseless. Meanwhile, his second wife, Helen, doesn’t want to face the fact that her daughter, Sarah, has terminal cancer, and Nicky’s daughter, Kayla, is dealing with schizophrenia, which derailed her career as a concert pianist, while raising her 7-year-old son, Jackie. She starts courting a man in her Hasidic congregation who seems like a straight arrow—until he proposes premarital sex to test their compatibility. Nicky’s son, Max, starts questioning his legal career while pursuing a nasty, thankless case. Nicky, Helen, Kayla, and Jackie also visit Nicky’s sister Kal, who’s now a Greek Orthodox nun known as Sister Theodora at a monastery in Greece, where she and Nicky grew up. Theodora converted after a priest sheltered her from the Nazis and Nicky miraculously survived a grenade explosion during the war. She still wrestles with guilt over her previous, insistent claim that Jackie is the second coming of Jesus, an idea that offended her family. Still, her uncanny warmth and clairvoyance make the Covos turn to her for solace: Helen asks her to pray for Sarah; Kayla seeks help for her composer’s block; Nicky, a professed atheist, confessed infidelity the previous year; and devoutly Jewish Jackie starts seeing visions of the Virgin Mary.
Berger’s yarn presents his characters with moral conundrums large and small, set in the context of deeply held religious traditions. It’s also a rich, subtle study of the varieties of religious devotion, from Talmudic legalism that tempers commandments with practical wisdom to mystical visions that feel rapturous and dangerous and prayerful communion with God. Berger explores all this via complex, flawed characters mired in real-life quagmires. He often writes with a meticulous realism that dissects behavior and motivations with clinical precision, as when Helen attempts to find solace in bourbon: “The surge of alcohol into her throat and esophagus brought about a coughing spell, and a small quantity of bourbon became airborne as droplets in Helen’s kitchen. When the coughing stopped, Helen spilled out the rest of her drink….That’s what grief does to you, she thought. It makes you selfish. It makes you reckless and thoughtless.” However, the prose also takes on a quiet lyricism in moments of plangent reflection: “The times in Kayla’s life when she had most felt prayer encompassing her, although she wouldn’t have called it such at the time, was when she performed. Beethoven, the Appassionata in particular, was nothing but a prayer to Hashem.” The Covos’ struggles are sure to resonate with anyone who’s ever had an uneasy conscience and a hopeful heart. An engrossing, soulful story of people working their way toward redemption.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2025
ISBN: 9781685136734
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Vivid characters are set adrift in a “ripped from the headlines” tableau that complicates the story, and the storytelling.
A diverting midlife story plucks at the secrets good people carry to the grave.
As a reader, Artie Dam—the protagonist of Strout’s 11th book—encounters Olive Kitteridge, “a crotchety old woman from Maine” and Strout’s most celebrated fictional character. Artie picked up the Pulitzer-anointed book centered on Olive after his wife, Evie, loved it, “oh, years ago now.” Strout is having a bit of fun—that “oh” is a trademark—even though she marbles her latest novel with marital infidelity, political anxiety, and suicide. Indeed, it is the fact that Olive’s father died by suicide that Artie, 57 and gaining a paunch, recalls now in his own dismalness. As the story begins, he is pondering the most discreet way to die, despite having been Massachusetts’ Teacher of the Year five years earlier. Artie seems the inverse of irascible Olive: beloved by his students; by his grown son, Rob; and by the English teacher, Anne, who quietly pines for him. But like Olive, Artie has distressing impulses—he steals a comb, then some expensive shirts. Much of the text bobs along on Artie’s stocktaking memories, chunked out in short, occasionally abrupt paragraphs. Strout’s storytelling is thinning a bit, like middle-aged hair. Then, midbook, she clobbers Artie with a brutal existential shock. In its wake, Strout surfs the nature of loneliness, corrosive secrets, and the convulsions of the 2024 presidential election. Hers is an unremittingly Blue State book, although Artie has one friend who, unbeknownst to him, supported Donald Trump. On the day after the election, Artie somberly concludes that his “country was committing suicide.” This is the first novel in which Strout entirely vacates Maine for another setting. But she sticks with Artie and, on the final pages, delivers him a satisfying finale.
Vivid characters are set adrift in a “ripped from the headlines” tableau that complicates the story, and the storytelling.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9798217154746
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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