A funny and occasionally touching novel about rebuilding your life after a crisis.
A woman and her former friend run rival support groups in Levin’s comic novel.
Hunter Fitzgerald suffers one indignity after the next. First, she loses her job when the fitness center she manages shuts down. Then her husband, Peter, leaves her for her newly sober friend, Angelica, a longtime partier and sponge whose memoir has just hit the bestseller list. Peter tries to sell their house out from under her just as Hunter realizes he’s destroyed her credit by maxing out credit cards in her name. Finally, while working at her new job at a Starbucks, Hunter learns that Angelica has trashed her in the memoir, accusing Hunter of allowing Angelica to get raped while they were out drinking one night. Hunter’s luck finally changes when, during an oppressively foggy day at a Bay Area flea market, she acquires a “talking stick” from a mysterious woman in an airstream trailer. “It was given to me by a woman I knew in an artists’ colony in New Mexico,” the woman tells her. “It’s been passed down from mother to daughter and used in female-only groups. Sometimes to settle a dispute among the women.” Upon receiving the stick, Hunter knows immediately what she needs to do: form a for-profit support group for women focusing on physical and emotional health. The first meeting, held at Hunter’s now for-sale house, attracts a not-quite-promising group of three, including Penelope, an elderly hypochondriac obsessed with dying; Dannika, a young woman who can’t get into college and is still mourning her dead mother; and Alicia, an OB-GYN who refuses to date out of concern for her teenage daughter. Meanwhile, Peter—who also retains access to the house—allows Angelica to use it to start her own, larger support group, the Fourteenth Step, in the room next to Hunter’s group. Despite her reservations, Hunter sticks it out with her sad trio, and the four of them begin to help one another get past the barriers that have been keeping them from happiness. But can they help Hunter save her house from Angelica’s growing army of supportees?
Levin writes with tenderness and humor, capturing the particular insecurities of each character. Here, Dannika hopes that friendships will develop between the members of the group, even as she frets about being judged by the other women: “Penelope’s house was a little closer to Dannika’s, but it was even swankier than Hunter’s, which made her feel embarrassed about her own place, with its old, cat-and-dust-covered furniture. True, the talking-stick women probably wouldn’t visit her often. Or ever.” Hunter, a California Republican and proud atheist who collects potentially valuable Barbies that she finds at flea markets, is a memorable and utterly believable character. It’s a pleasure to see her heart softened by the equally specific members of her support group. The book is perhaps longer than it needs to be at nearly 400 pages, but readers will enjoy the extra time they get to spend with these characters.
A funny and occasionally touching novel about rebuilding your life after a crisis.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781648210310
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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