A vivid, engrossing portrait of a family amid the turmoil of death and revelations.
In this debut novel, three estranged sisters must reconnect to receive their inheritance and uncover familial secrets.
Annie LeBlanc, the protagonist of Larivee’s story, is living a happily married existence in Berlin despite the encroaching catastrophe of climate change and a rush of pandemics. On an otherwise normal morning, she spots a ghost across the train platform. At first, she doesn’t recognize the apparition. But when she gets home, she looks inside an odd box that she recently received full of old photographs from her hometown in Maine, and realizes it was her grandmother. Annie soon finds out that her two sisters, Jeanne and Mary, received similar mysterious boxes, and that all three are being called back home to Maine. Their father—a reclusive, harsh, and successful novelist—has died, and they’re required to be present at the reading of his will. After an emotionally charged reunion, the sisters arrive in Maine to discover that their father was fabulously wealthy, and has left them his entire estate, so long as they agree to spend at least one month together in their childhood home. This would be strange enough, but it turns out that Mary is also seeing ghosts and Jeanne has been observing them since childhood. As the sisters come to grips with their newfound affluence, they discover that their parents’ ugly marriage was more complicated than it seemed, and that their father may have been their protector all along. While a surprise to the three women, these secrets are well known to a small sect of locals (including another celebrated author) who have their own motives regarding the sisters. Larivee’s novel is not short on pathos. Fortunately, she has skillfully drawn the relationships between the three women, each of whom readers will happily follow. Many of her details are rich with the authenticity of lived experience, such as the author’s rendering of Berlin in an era before cellphones, “where a counter on the phone let you know how much you were spending, click, click, click. The longer the distance, the faster the clicks.” Readers looking for groundbreaking prose may not find it here, but those in search of a deeply felt, highly plotted family narrative will be delighted.
A vivid, engrossing portrait of a family amid the turmoil of death and revelations.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798992207316
Page Count: 264
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2025
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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