Vivid, emotionally intense, and unafraid of the dark.
After her brother's untimely death, a young, queer Jamaican woman living in Canada travels home to Kingston.
Twice during her bumpy attempt to reacquaint herself with the city of her birth, Akúa is accused of having no “broughtupsy”—manners. “ ‘Yuh see dis?’ the woman says, nudging someone beside her. ‘Gyal nuh ’ave no broughtupsy.’ ” Though she was born and lived there until her mother’s death from sickle cell anemia when Akúa was 10, she is now 20 and making her first return visit. It is 1996; the occasion is a sad one. Her 12-year-old brother has also died of sickle cell, and she is returning to spread his ashes. It is the first time she’s seen her older sister, Tamika, since their widowed father left the island for Texas, then Vancouver, taking Akúa with him; Tamika chose to stay on and attend boarding school. As a committed Christian, Tamika is appalled by Akúa's sexuality (she’s just parted ways with a longtime girlfriend), warning her that she will not be accepted. “ ‘They will laugh at you and spit in your face,’ Tamika says. ‘Are you listening? They will stone you. They will bring their machetes and guns. Listen to me, mi seh! They will butcher you in broad daylight then leave you to rot. And the police will pay you no mind.’ ” The style mixes a straightforward simplicity with patois vocabulary and, ultimately, more graphic language after Akúa gets sexually involved with a woman who works in a strip club. As Akúa’s time in Kingston moves forward, as she deposits bits of her brother’s ashes at key locations from her childhood, the story builds to a fierce, then sweetly redemptive, climax. The voice of innocence, the violence, and the sibling dynamics of Cooke’s debut recall Justin Torres’ We the Animals (2011),also a queer coming-of-age story—but this blend of those elements is as unique as a thumbprint.
Vivid, emotionally intense, and unafraid of the dark.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781646221882
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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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