An intelligently conceived family tale hampered by uneven prose.
A married couple’s pedestrian life is waylaid by their daughter’s desire to uncover their mysterious past in this novel.
Vera and Paul Guardic have spent the last 13 years living a quiet suburban life in Akron, Ohio. He’s a professor at a small college, deeply involved in the machinations of local politics. The couple have a daughter, Paris, soon to turn 18 years old. Vera and Paul chose “the predictable order of America, its power and personal comforts” after a perilous life resisting the Nazis in Paris once the pair fled the Anschluss in Austria. Vera desperately tries to bury the memories of that past, especially those of American Ben Iceland, a freedom fighter with whom she shared a torrid relationship. After a chance encounter with a figure from their past, Vera and Paul are forced to confront the personal history they’ve interred under the topsoil of quotidian lives. But their daughter, evocatively named after the site of their adventures, can’t bear her ignorance of her parents’ history. She suddenly takes flight and heads to her namesake city in order to find the principal characters in the family drama, including Ben. Monaco deftly constructs a thoughtful meditation on the long shadow cast by one’s past, the inescapable source of one’s character. At its best moments, the novel is reminiscent of Patrick Modiano’s work, deeply pensive and darkly suggestive. But the prose can devolve into the ponderous—Monaco simply tries too laboriously to reach philosophically profound heights, a strain particularly notable in the dialogue. Here, one character describes the allure of Denise Novette, a sex worker: “The men will come to worship Athena. You are able to reveal a goddess to them. You are Madame Curie, a muse, a Queen Wilhelmina, Pauline Baker, Anais Nin, Diagalev. You are Athena.”
An intelligently conceived family tale hampered by uneven prose.Pub Date: May 1, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 216
Publisher: DEM Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2020
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 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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