If Ingmar Bergman’s films are too cheerful for you, this is just the antidote.
Norwegian novelist Solstad delivers a grim exercise in modern literary existentialism.
Bjørn Hansen is 50 as this novel opens. He had left Oslo years before for the quiet country town of Kongsberg, the hometown of his lover, Turid Lammers, for whom he abandoned his wife and child. Now, having talked his way into the job of town treasurer by virtue of a college degree, he has left Turid, too. “This was how Bjørn Hansen’s existence had shaped up. This was his life. At Kongsberg. With Turid Lammers, this woman he had to live with because he feared he would otherwise regret everything,” writes Solstad. Turid’s sin? As director of the local theater company, she allowed Bjørn to deliver a disastrous performance in a production of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, a mirthless story perfectly at home in Bjørn’s sprawling library of similarly dour books: Kafka, Kierkegaard, Cela. Of The Family of Pascual Duarte, the brooding masterwork by the last writer, Bjørn intones, “Was it sombre enough? I mean, I liked the book, but did it go deeply enough, I mean deeply enough into my own existence?” Bjørn empties out his library when his forgotten son, Peter, bobs up to attend optometry school; Bjørn lets Peter stay in his home but steadily regrets the decision when he realizes Peter has no direction in life and is roundly disliked by his classmates. “Youths like Peter Korpi Hansen were ten a penny,” Bjørn grumbles. “All of them radiated the same intoxicating nonchalance, self-indulgence and idleness.” Like the similarly bookish Peter Kien of Elias Canetti’s Auto-da-Fé, Bjørn, too, is an ostensibly influential man without purpose or power. Steered into an insurance scam by his drug-addicted doctor when he announces his intention to “actualise his No, his great Negation,” Bjørn surrenders his will as if glad to be rid of it. The philosophical implications are many, though it’s a bit of a slog through an essentially actionless plot to get at them.
If Ingmar Bergman’s films are too cheerful for you, this is just the antidote.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2826-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
IN THE NEWS
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
Great crime fiction.
An apparent suicide threatens to destroy an Irish farm town in the final volume of French’s Cal Hooper trilogy.
In the fictional western Ireland townland of Ardnakelty, “there’s a girl going after missing.” Soon young Rachel Holohan is found dead in the river. Shortly before, she had stopped at Lena Dunne’s home, and nothing had seemed amiss. The medical examiner determines she’d swallowed antifreeze, and he presumes she then fell from a bridge into the water. The medical examiner and the town agree she’d died by suicide. But there is far more to the plot: 16-year-old Trey Reddy thinks Tommy Moynihan murdered Rachel. Moynihan doles out favors and punishments to the local townsfolk, who know it’s best not to cross him. Now rumors spread that Moynihan wants land and has a secret plan to forcibly buy up parcels from the locals. A factory will be built, or a great big data center, or who knows what. If Tommy’s son, Eugene, can get elected to the local council, then compulsory purchase orders for land will follow, and the farms will disappear. Eugene, who’d been romantically involved with Rachel, is wonderfully described as “on the weedy edge of good-looking” and just fine as long as you “don’t have high expectations in the way of chins.” Lena is engaged to the American Cal Hooper, an ex-cop turned woodworker. They are “more or less raising” Trey, and these three core characters are drawn into the mystery of Rachel’s death and may have to face the looming clouds of civilizational change for Ardnakelty. Lena is chastised for “asking your wee questions all round the townland,” and Trey wants to quit school, against Cal’s advice. Finally, the story’s best line: “You can’t go killing people just because they deserve it.”
Great crime fiction.Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593493465
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
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