A compelling novel with rom-com elements that alternates between pathos and humor.
Young’s debut novel offers a humorous record of one woman’s unconventional journey through loss, grief, and self-reconciliation.
After five happy years of marriage, Eliza Talbot suddenly becomes a widow in her 30s. She’s coerced into therapy by Virginia, her annoyingly impeccable mother-in-law. Eliza becomes increasingly vexed by Virginia’s meddlesome antics, which include uninvited appearances at the cottage that Eliza shared with her deceased husband, Joseph, in the village of Dunsbury, England. She’s also irritated by Virginia’s self-appointed role as makeover coordinator for Joseph’s rose garden. The unsavory contributions of the Casserole Brigade, headed by nosy neighbor Mrs. Clark, intensify Eliza’s frustration—and complicate her digestion. Her therapist, Dr. Joyce, seems just as unhelpful when she advises her to write letters addressed to Joseph. But soon, Eliza writes: “Since you died, I have become a collector of platitudes.” She manages her animosity toward everyone in her life through an imagined connection with Hilda, a spider, and her actual friendship with Eleanor, a fellow support-group dropout. As Eliza’s “Dear Dead Husband” letters accumulate, she moves toward reconciliation with her high school best friend Caz and a possible romance with Eleanor’s adult son, David. Although the cause of Eliza’s sudden character growth toward the end of Young’s novel remains ambiguous, her achievement of emotional equilibrium is effectively foreshadowed in her letters’ evolving language: “No one wants witnesses when they’re gathering the sad, pathetic remains of their life off a heap on the floor. That is private.” Eliza’s pursuit of self-reliance as she struggles to evade Virginia and the Casserole Brigade makes for a rapid page-turner. While a few awkwardly coined polysyllabic words (platitudiest, fakeiarrhea, Halloweenafication) slacken the pace, the upbeat, humorous tone promises a satisfying conclusion.
A compelling novel with rom-com elements that alternates between pathos and humor.Pub Date: April 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781067533007
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
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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