An impressive tale, wonderfully plotted and detailed, about a woman starting over.
This debut novel, set in New England and on the Greek island of Naxos, flirts with the bodice-ripper genre but then turns into something far different.
Vera Mine, a young 55, is sitting near her dying father, Warren, in a Massachusetts hospital room in this tale’s opening scene. After an agonizing few days, Warren does die, leaving Vera drained and totally bereft. She is divorced and childless. She loved her husband, Max, but he left her and gained “a stereotypical trophy wife.” (The therapists all agreed that Vera’s resistance to sex was the problem.) Financially well off, she decides to go to Naxos. There, she hopes to recover from her grief and start anew, practicing her painting (she’s a creditable amateur) and remaining open to adventure. Naxos, of course, is that most romantic of places, conjuring up Zorba and numerous Greek island clichés. On the ferry from Athens, she meets the embodiment of it all: Demetri, a kind of dark-haired Greek Fabio. He is friendly; his English is better than her Greek; and he and his wife and children live close to her rented cottage. She is coming back to life and so is her libido. Demetri often comes over (how does he get his farming done?) and asks to borrow her laptop to “check his email.” Greece is grappling with the draconian measures that the European Union put in place to make the country pay off its debts. Demetri often rants about this fraught situation. After some months, the protagonist’s old friend Sean, who, as the buddy convention goes, knows Vera better than she knows herself, pays a visit. He messes around in her laptop and finds that things are very bad (and dangerous) indeed.
Revealing further developments would spoil the story. That said, the ending delivers a delightful twist, an upsetting of expectations worthy of a mordant O. Henry. Roy is a very talented writer, often wickedly so, as when she describes Vera’s ditzy sister and her clueless uncle while Warren is dying (and the outrageous obit that these two write). Or Vera’s face-off with an officious dweeb in a dog park (she usually says fuckonly in her mind, but more and more she is shouting it at people who deserve it, a mark of her coming into her own). There are also moving, poetic passages on such unlikely things as hospital room numbers (“Suddenly, the numbers were briefly serene, leaned toward her, swaying: appealed to her humbly and modestly—gently asked her to stop, to please listen, to pause for a moment and rest, yes, rest”). In addition, the author deftly describes Demetri’s two kids. Vera is very perceptive, and it is clear that Elektra is Demetri’s favorite and that things are not well between Tasso and his father (as readers will see). Vera came to Greece steeped in its mythic history, enamored of Athena’s “metis.” Eventually, she will discover if she shares Athena’s “wisdom and cunning,” as most hold metis to mean. There are epigraphs heading the chapters, which tend to be short, and Roy keeps things moving along briskly. The point of view is Vera’s, third-person limited. Why it is not Vera, first person, will become quite apparent at the very end.
An impressive tale, wonderfully plotted and detailed, about a woman starting over.Pub Date: July 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73751-660-6
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Middlesex Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.
A high school senior pursues an affair with her teacher.
Seventeen-year-old Waldo, the narrator of McCurdy’s fiction debut, lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with her mother, though she’s long been the parent in their relationship. She heats her own frozen meals and pays the bills on time while her mom chases man after man and makes well-meaning promises she never keeps. Waldo blows her Victoria’s Secret wages on online shopping sprees and binges on junk food, inevitably crashing after the fleeting highs of her indulgences. Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher, has “thinning hair and nose pores”; he’s 40 years old and married with a child. Nevertheless—or possibly as a result?—Waldo’s attraction to him is “instant. So sudden it’s alarming. So palpable it’s confusing.” Mr. Korgy professes to want to keep their friendship aboveboard, but after a sexual encounter at the school’s winter formal that she initiates, an affair begins. Will this reckless pursuit be the one that actually satisfies Waldo, and is she as mature as she thinks she is? Waldo is a keen observer of people and provides sharp commentary on the punishing work of female beauty. Readers of McCurdy’s bestselling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died (2022), will surely be curious about the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship, and it is one of the novel’s highlights, full of realistic pity and anger and need. (“I want to scream at her. I want her to hug me.”) Unfortunately, the prose is often unwieldy and sometimes downright cringeworthy: When Waldo tells Mr. Korgy she loves him, “The words hang in the air in that constipated way they do when you know that you shouldn’t have said them.” Waldo frequently lists emotions and adjectives in triplicate, and events that could be significant aren’t sufficiently explored or given enough space to breathe before the novel races on to the next thing.
A debut novel with bright spots, but unbalanced and lacking in finesse.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593723739
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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