A distinctive debut from a promising author.
Intertwined tales of longing, regret, and the Holocaust.
This collection takes its title from the first story, in which a woman wishing that any one of the men who has left her would come back finds them all on her doorstep. When they tell her that she can have them all or she can remain alone, she sets them an impossible task. Suffused with a desperate desire for lives that might have been, this affecting fable sets the tone for the fiction to come. In “For Somebody So Scared,” a woman named Bridget remembers how the greatest love of her life, Kaye, made it inevitable that she would abandon her. In “From Somebody So Scared,” Kaye describes the moment when, after an absence lasting decades, Bridget returns. We see a similar device in “I Am Going To Lose Everything I Have Loved” and “To Lose Everything I Have Ever Loved,” both stream-of-consciousness stories narrated by a woman named Dinah. In the former, she presents herself as a familiar figure: the woman who doesn’t want to know that her married lover is never going to leave his wife. She is as self-obsessed as she is obsessed with Samuel, and she radiates damage. What makes her heartbreaking is that she is haunted. She’s haunted by her grandmother who survived the camps, and she also feels like the cousins who never had a chance to be born because of the Holocaust have a claim on her life and her body. In the sequel story, Dinah discovers that winning her lover for herself doesn’t mean that she can trust love. Although this is Sender’s first book, she’s no novice. She has an MFA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. She’s a Yaddo and McDowell fellow. And she has published in such well-known journals as Kenyon Review and Prairie Schooner. There are stories here that feel immature—more like student exercises than finished works—but Sender’s willingness to explore primal hurts makes her fiction compelling.
A distinctive debut from a promising author.Pub Date: March 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781952271786
Page Count: 208
Publisher: West Virginia Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 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
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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